


Hunger

by thebabytiger



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Dragon Queen - Freeform, F/F, I love this ship, anyway this came to me and I had to make it happen, if I didn't want SwanQueen so much this would totally be my OTP
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-10
Updated: 2015-05-26
Packaged: 2018-03-18 19:38:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 24,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3581472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebabytiger/pseuds/thebabytiger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maleficent is back and Regina is undercover trying not to think about how much the weight of Mal's stare feels like home.</p><p>(A re-imagining of all Mal/Regina scenes from 4x15 (Enter the Dragon) and beyond. Each chapter is one scene)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1x02 - Forbidden Fortress

"How are you, dear?" Maleficent asked politely, crossing in front of the fire back towards her seat: an empty, straight-backed armchair.

"I'm doing fine," Regina's casual answer slipped out quickly. Too quickly, and almost directly on the heels of Mal's question. The question was standard small talk, and Regina had spent enough time having etiquette drilled into her by Cora to know that, but it felt like so much more than just the innocent question someone asks just to fill the silence. She allowed herself a momentary scowl as she looked into the blazing fireplace in front of her, glad for the ever-shifting shadows as the flames crackled happily and for the fact that Maleficent's back was to her. 

"Are you?" Mal's tone is pure disbelief, though it's as polite and unruffled as it always had been. She didn't wait for an answer. "If it were me I'd be simply tortured watching that flake of Snow so happy." She pours some wine into her goblet, still standing, but otherwise seems completely at home, as if Regina's presence doesn't bother her. Only the fact that she still carries her staff betrays her guarded caution to Regina's attention, as the two had spent enough time together since Regina had taken the throne for some sort of rapport to have been built. In fact, Mal is entirely too put together for this visit, dressed with all the trappings of a royal audience rather than the visit of an old friend. Perhaps the pair of them are too far past the easy friendship they'd once had, though part of Regina can't help but miss the Maleficent she had first come to know, the Maleficent with the loose, untamed hair and whose wild unpredictability had kept Regina on her toes long after she had gotten rid of her fear of the tall blonde. "Weren't you about the same age," she continues as if it's just occurred to her, finally seating herself in the lone armchair, "when you were to be married, before she ruined it all." Regina barely manages to find the time to draw breath in the minuscule pause as Mal continues, blithely raising the goblet to her in an obscene toast. "Yes, you were."

"Yes, it was about the same age you were," Regina says, never having been one to let sleeping dragons lie, trying and mostly failing to maintain the illusion of having just recovered a rather hazy memory, "when that sleeping beauty got the best of you, my dear Maleficent." The riposte is quick, and Maleficent's smile fades as she swallows a mouthful of wine, goblet slowly lowering back towards her lap. 

"I soldiered on, as you will too, hopefully" Mal says dismissively, but the goblet doesn't move back towards her lips and Regina knows that the other woman has determined that she needs her full attention focused on the conversation. Perhaps Father had been right when he had said Mal would not be happy to see her, though there had been a time when every corner of this castle had been as intimately familiar to Regina as the one she lived in now, and there had been a time when she had come and gone as if she, too, was a resident and as if she paid no heed to the fact that maps labeled it a Forbidden Fortress. 

"Enough games," Regina growls, too focused, too driven, and too on edge to enjoy the banter. In that respect, nothing between the two women has changed. Maleficent had always been the calmer of the pair, though when they burned they both burned with equal intensity. Maleficent smirked at having won the tiny power struggle, though it had more or less always been a foregone conclusion. Mal had almost always been able to out-class Regina when it came to playing a waiting game. "You know why I'm here. I need my curse back." It's not a request.

"It's not yours anymore," Mal reminds her softly. "A deal's a deal. I traded you my sleeping curse."

"Which failed," Regina is quick to point out, though she really doesn't appreciate the reminder, nor the reality. "Undone by a simple kiss." The sour look on Maleficent's face as she looks into the flames tells Regina that she may have found a sore spot. "Now please, return what's mine."

"The Dark Curse? Really?" Regina feels like a child again under the weight of that tone, which tells her in no uncertain terms that Maleficent is once more looking at her like she's a naive, innocent, idiotic little girl, like she had been on her first visit to this castle. "You must know that even it's unholy power can't bring your loved one back from the dead." Regina stiffens at the reference, unwilling to confirm or deny what she does, indeed, already know, but already resents and wishes to ignore. Once more on the offensive, Mal's movements become slightly more flowery as she turns to the black unicorn beside her. "Have you considered a pet? They can be quite comforting."

Regina forces herself to inhale as rage ignites, trying to keep her temper before she does something that she will regret. The steady stroking motion of Mal's hand on that unicorn's nose doesn't help, as it only serves to emphasize the woman's words, rather than give her something harmless to focus on. When she finally manages to rein in her temper, she looks at the other woman, knowing that her emotions have painted her words with a dangerous undertone and that the deliberate cadence speaks to her hard earned control. "The only comfort for me is Snow White's suffering." If the words sting the other woman, who had once served as comfort, of a sort, Regina doesn't care. 

"Well, it's her wedding night," Mal points out flippantly. "I doubt she's suffering right now." The suggestion is lewd, and Regina is too used to lewdness from Mal at that point to be shocked by it, but the thought makes her sour as, despite the crassness, it's likely accurate. 

"I need. That curse," Regina stresses, leaning forward for emphasis, beyond ready to be done with the conversation. "I know you keep it hidden in the orb above your staff."

"Hidden for the good of all, old friend," Maleficent says, barely even batting an eyelid, but Regina's sharp eyes notice the small half-motion of her hands towards the staff in her lap, even though Mal manages to stop it almost the instant the motion starts. "Whoever created that monstrosity makes the two of us look positively... moral." The clear reluctance to even say the word, which is delivered almost as if it might burn as it is uttered, would normally make Regina smile, but she doesn't have time for amusement when this morning's hurt and rage are still swirling inside of her demanding action. "Who did give it to you?" Mal asks curiously, and Regina instantly walls herself off, sitting back upright with a careful posture for only a brief moment as she rises from her chair, the need to move too great.

"Where I got it is none of your concern," she informs the blonde, turning her back to her as she casts about herself for some way to regain control of herself, to calm down enough to not only sit back down but to keep from doing something foolish that might not pan out. The fireplace roars as she spins back to face Maleficent, the flames growing as she struggles to keep control of her anger. "Hand it back."

"Must we do this?" Mal asks, unimpressed by the display and once more regarding her as if she is a particularly dense child that she is being forced to entertain.

"Alas we must," Regina says pityingly, and the sentiment is more sincere than she would have expected. The pair of them have argued, and spells have been thrown, but they have not truly fought in opposition until now and Regina knows that there is no way to determine what the outcome may be, or even if they both will survive the encounter. The flames grow, pulled into her hand as Mal stands, leaping to the far corner of the room just in time to deflect the incoming fireball with her staff, but Regina hadn't expected the opening move to land. Axes, swords, and other weapons on the wall begin to shake and rattle against the stone as they slowly come to hover in mid-air behind her, and Maleficent stands steady, magic a hazy shield in front of her.

But Regina's focus has already shifted, realizing that this fight needs to end quickly if she is to manage victory, and the unicorn, still by Maleficent's empty chair, whinnies as the weapons all come to a sudden, stiff attention in a cloud behind Regina. 

"No!" Maleficent yells, sounding possibly more tortured than Regina had ever heard, but the blades are already shifting their attention and have been sent flying through the air to race Maleficent, who makes it just in time to stop the weapons with another hazy burst of magic. A quick glance towards the ceiling is the only warning Regina gives as the chandelier falls from the ceiling, the rings now loose to fall over the tall blonde and tighten into three banded shackles. The staff falls from her grip as she is propelled backwards to hit the wall with the dull ring of iron on stone.

Carefully, almost tenderly, Regina crouches to pick up the staff, turning it over in her hands to examine the craftsmanship of the familiar piece. "Love is weakness, Maleficent. I thought you knew that?" The words are not half as smug as they could have been, Regina too amazed at her apparent victory to manage to gloat. 

"If you're going to kill me, kill me!" Maleficent grinds out through gritted teeth, blue eyes bright with unrestrained anger that Regina hasn't seen in quite some time. 

"Why would I do that?" Regina asks, eyes still intent on the staff, caressing it softly and reveling in the feel of the wood, metal, and glass beneath her fingertips. The sensation is both new and familiar, the weight of memories squeezes in her chest almost unbearably, even as the rush of victory tries to overwhelm them. It doesn't entirely succeed. Gaze soft now that the fight is over and she has her prize, she finally allows herself to look at Maleficent, fingers pausing as they lovingly trace the wing of the dragon at the tip of the staff. If she had thought she wasn't welcome in the Forbidden Fortress before, she is a pariah now. "You're my only friend."

"Don't do this - this curse. There are lines even we shouldn't cross," Maleficent says urgently, but Regina's face just hardens into a classic expression of stubbornness as she flips the staff upside down and smashes the glass globe firmly, but carefully, on the ground. "All power comes with a price," Mal continues, sounding more desperate as Regina crouches to pick up a scroll, the curse, from the shards of shattered glass. She unfurls it carefully, unable to believe that she has what she has sought until she can prove it with her own eyes. "Enacting it will take a terrible toll, it will leave an emptiness inside you: a void you will never be able to fill." Mal's voice had been rising in both pitch and urgency, but it breaks on the last word and that, more than anything, is enough to regain Regina's attention. 

She lets the small scroll roll itself back into a tight tube and gazes, determination tinged with sadness, at Maleficent, still bound and trapped by pieces of a ruined chandelier.

"So be it."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 4x15 Enter the Dragon - Granny's Diner

It's been years since she last saw Maleficent and there's something so familiar about the entire concept that, against all logical sense, Regina has to forcibly stop herself from relaxing the instant she's through the door to Granny's. For one, quite a bit has changed since she last saw Mal in the Enchanted Forest over thirty years ago, and for another she's trying to work an undercover operation and she knows that a false sense of security is the last thing she needs. But the blonde's sharp gaze falls over her like the comforting drape of a cozy blanket and lures her easily into memories of the past.

Not for the first time does Regina wonder if perhaps this operation is too much for her to handle - right out of the gate and she's already fielding curve balls. Her resolve firms as she thinks of another blonde, the other mother to her son, and tries to think of what she is doing for Emma and not the idiocy that Snow fucking White always manages to pull her into. She and Snow have as much history between them as Regina does with Mal, and it's equally fraught with tension and love and a bizarre feeling of 'home', but Emma is something different entirely. She had thought many things about the other woman during the Savior's time in town, but Regina knows that Emma was not at all what she expected initially and that the pair of them are better suited for friendship than the Evil Queen could have anticipated.

So she shakes off the feeling trying to pull her in and refocuses herself on her mission, not on how surprisingly good Mal looks in her vaguely mobster-esque garb, and not on how good it is to see her, as she has just said, back from the ashes, and tries to bulldoze her way back into the groove she had worked so hard to get herself into on her way over there.

She's not prepared for Mal to poof right next to her, and she rears back slightly as her personal space is assaulted with everything that is Mal. The other woman is tall, Regina had forgotten just how tall, and the Mayor's substantial heels don't do much to close the gap. She hasn't been much intimidated by Maleficent since she was a young queen sneaking her way into the dragon's castle, and she isn't now, but she knows she looks more than a little flat-footed. She knows that the others will guess at the reason and that their assumptions, incorrect though they are, will not work in her favor. So she steels herself against the other woman's presence, forces herself to ignore the ever-present heat that cannot be muted by conservative gray, and allows herself to relax minutely into the scant space that remains between them. Perhaps coming in hard and fast, a good offense a good defense, is not the way to play this. Perhaps old habits and old memories plague Mal as much as they do her own mind.

"So that's why you think I'm back, to kill you," Mal sneers, and honestly Regina had thought so but now that the blonde voices the idea she knows she's wrong and she knows that this has more and more to do with Snow White than she could have ever imagined. Briefly, she wonders if anything she could do or learn while undercover can even have an impact on something that so obviously has little to do with her.

Still. "I trapped you underground for thirty years, and you're not big on forgiveness," Regina reminds her, unsure if it's possible to deter Mal from her grand scheme by needling her or if she's just going to look foolish by trying to get a rise out of the woman. Her periphery shows Ursula and Cruella exchanging a glance, and she hardens herself against the judgement that she knows is there. They don't know what to make of her, but they understandably know more than she about why Mal is here. 

"That's true but what you did is nothing in the grand scheme." For someone who as good at holding a grudge as Maleficent is, Regina can't help but be a little worried that 30 years as a dragon can be swept so easily under the rug. "There are far worse crimes that must be answered for."

"Careful, Darling, she's thick as thieves with those heroes," Cruella drawls out, clearly content to leave her input to the minimal reminder and, that done, return to the partially full lowball glass she was still swirling absently in her hand. Cruella had always been a fan of alcohol, and Regina wasn't entirely sure that the woman ever had a fully sober moment. 

"Not by choice," she jumps in on the back of Cruella's reminder. "You know," Regina underlines, eyes boring forcefully into Mal's blues as if a simple gaze could make the taller woman remember what they were to each other, "how much I wanted my revenge." Maleficent doesn't even blink and Regina wonders at the unintentional use of the past tense. Well, time as Mayor had taught her how to talk her way out of a problem. "But in this town I had to play nice to survive. Alone." The carefully place emphasis on the final word finally garners her a reaction from Maleficent, who flinches slightly as if the single word holds a world of meaning behind it. Regina supposes that it does. "Watching them enjoy the happiness I was denied. If you're planning on destroying some of that happiness, I want in."

"You can't expect us to believe that," Ursula says, face as dark and distrustful as it ever had been. There is little love lost between the two of them, but she understands that the three villains before her were a somewhat package deal and that, more importantly, Cruella and Ursula were as thick as thieves. She supposes that every quartet, however quasi-formal the arrangement that brought them together is, was bound to splinter off into pairs. Regina doesn't think for an instant that she has to impress everyone in the room, but without Mal's support she won't be getting anywhere. 

"Of course she doesn't. That's why she's here. She wants us to see that she's still one of us." Mal's words come so close on the tail of Ursula's comment that the blonde almost cuts the sea witch off, and the Mayor is relieved to note that Mal hardly skips a beat in rising to her defense. It's far from the most rousing support Regina has ever received, especially as she can sense the 'but' coming her way soon, but it does its work to convince Regina that she and Mal are, and have always been, on much the same wavelength. Besides, the Queen had always thought the squid was a little dull to begin with. What the puppy saw in her... well... Regina was getting dangerously close to having that same issue herself, considering the amount of time she spent with Emma actual-puppy Swan while working on Operation Mongoose. 

"I am." Regina's statement is sharp, and probably a little bit too defensive, in response to the challenge, but Mal doesn't seem to think anything of it. Like the Evil Queen, the Dragon appears to be falling comfortably back into a long-ago established rhythm, caught up in the thrill of the familiar banter between them which had always traveled indiscriminately through words uttered with a low, seductive whine and the sudden spike of sharp, acrid defensiveness

"Then let's find out," she says, turning to a table next to her and pulling a shot glass from among several other items littering the table top. "Are you still a bad girl, Regina?" Mal asks but it's less question than it is challenge and Regina feels herself rising to it almost automatically, despite the niggling thought in the back of her mind that wonders exactly how many questions she will be answering with her response to such an innocent-seeming sentence.

There's a brief pause as she weighs her options, calculates just how many different ways this can go from that point on, and then takes the shot from Mal's hand, fingers brushing gently, and knocks it back smoothly. She doesn't stop to wonder at all of the things she could have been drinking as she feels the whiskey burn its way down her throat, and she can feel that the warmth that spreads through her body as the alcohol starts to spread its fingers across her nerve endings has leaked out of her eyes as she regards Maleficent with a thinly disguised smoldering look. Forgotten, the shot glass crushes itself into tiny crystalline shards which spill from her fingertips in a shower of glass that only Ursula and Cruella even notice. She and Mal are too busy staring at each other to truly take any heed of it, both pairs of eyes shining with promise.

"The worst."


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 4x15 Enter the Dragon - Railroad Tracks

"Now will someone please tell me where the hell we're going?" Regina asks when the silence in the car and the relentless sense of anticipation finally becomes too much. She's not nervous, per se, but she knows that whatever comes next, like everything else so far, has the ability to make her or break her. If it's going to break her, she'd at the very least like to have managed to get something out of it before then. She's riding shotgun in Cruella's car, the driver wearing a grin that seems just as crazed as her maniacal driving, and it's probably a bad idea to be in a car being driven by someone who, sober, is an already poor driver. Regina supposes that this road trip adventure is just one of the many ways she will be taking her life in her hands before breakfast.

"What, and spoil all the fun? You'll find out soon enough," Cruella assures, words seeming to slur ever so slightly. Neither the delivery nor the sentiment are enough to shake Regina out of her increasing urge to fidget, and none of those things are helped at all by the weight of Maleficent's stare from the backseat. She and Ursula are crowded into the back, leaving Cruella to drive and Regina where she can be best supervised, but the Sea Witch clearly has very little interest in actually watching either of the women up front and is instead looking off at the scenery flying by with sullen indifference (and seemingly little concern for her own life, which is decidedly at risk given the quality of Cruella's driving). Maleficent, on the other hand, had happily settled into the backseat and had proceeded to level a heavy, hungry stare at Regina that hadn't shifted a single inch the entire time they've been in the car. It's simply a continuation of their exchange in the diner, but it's getting to Regina more and more as neither party actually says anything and the more Regina gets the sense that Mal is just toying with her. If Regina is to be the mouse, she'd at least like to be doing something interesting instead of slowly dying of nerves, anticipation, and the curious heat that accompanies the prickling feel of Mal's stare on her skin.

"Fine. But out of professional curiosity, I have to know," Regina begins, feeling that any conversation has to be better than the earlier bout of silence, though almost re-thinking it as she can feel Mal's gaze sharpen with interest. "Just how did you two manage to resurrect her?"

"First things first," Mal orders, finally roused from her intense staring contest with Regina's shoulder enough to actually participate in the conversation. "You see, some of us don't exactly trust you." All she gets is a casual arch of an eyebrow in response, as Regina hadn't truly expected an answer to her question, but she would admit to feeling some disappointment at the idea that she will once more be subjected to the deafening silence in the car. She can't help but notice, however, that Mal's comment points no fingers, and that the blonde does not bother to name herself as one of the 'some' that don't trust Regina.

Luckily, she doesn't have to wait long, as 15 seconds later the car is screeching to a halt in the middle of one of the only railroad tracks in the entire town and Regina can't tamp down the sudden nervousness that shoots through her. Her eyes dart to both sides, not willing to betray her unease by turning her whole head to look, as the train's whistle blows and the crossing's gates are closing around them, trapping them effectively from driving forwards or backwards off the tracks. Pausing for a moment in the growing glow of the train's single headlight, she turns to face Cruella. 

"What are you doing?" If she sounds curious it's because she is, and any sense of fear or nerves that she had initially has vanished. The three women she is with wouldn't be content to kill her outright just like this, and they are as trapped in the car as she is, which means none of them will be dying. This is a test, Regina knows, and she wants to know, out of a strange sense of professional curiosity, what exactly the test will be. Mal's gaze sharpens once more at the movement and the question, growing impossibly more predatory and ever so slightly amused. Regina can only assume this is because she is the only one in the car who looks even the least bit interested about the presence of the train; of the three remaining villains, only Mal looks slightly interested in anything else - Ursula looks lost in thought, gaze still out the window, and Cruella looks practically bored with the proceedings. 

"Playing my favorite game. It's called 'Don't be a Hero'. First one that saves us loses." Cruella is looking past Regina now, pressing the fingers of one hand to her temple as she looks at the oncoming train with the same look of half-arousal, half calculation that she does with everything that manages to catch her interest.

"You've got to be kidding me," Regina deadpans, certain that no one should have ever let the clearly drunk and deluded woman behind the wheel, and not just because she was a poor driver. 

"You don't like it, then just poof us out of here," Ursula states calmly from the backseat and Regina has half a mind to do just that. Only half, because she's still sort of hoping that someone will call a stop to this lunacy. 

But Mal's eyes only flick disinterestedly away from Cruella to lock back onto Regina as Cruella's expression grows just a touch more delighted. It's clear to Regina that the mere look is a challenge in and of itself, that Mal is content to wait and watch and see what she does, and Regina knows that whatever she does next is her first true test. The options are simple, but making the choice, especially with Mal's gaze boring into her from the backseat, is more difficult than she anticipated. Falling back into the rhythm of their banter had been easy, back at the diner, but sitting in tense silence is definitely not. Posture tense, she grits her teeth and stares fixedly at the dash in front of her as the train gets closer and closer. 

She manages to wait all the way until she can see the train in her peripheral, less than a dozen feet from the car, before closing her eyes in defeat as a cloud of purple smoke envelopes the car. Her eyes open again as it reappears back on the Storybrooke side of the tracks. Cruella gives a little sigh that just seems to drip disappointment as she settles dejectedly back into her seat, as if Regina had ruined all of the fun of the game. Behind her, Regina senses more than sees the shift of Maleficent's head that more or less speaks of the same sentiment.

She's speaking more to Mal, as the look unnerves her more, when she says, "Come on, don't look at me like that."

"I told you she'd gone soft, Mal, pay up," Cruella bemoans, hand already reaching over her shoulder towards the dragon in the seat behind her. A pale hand offers the apparent prize, a diamond necklace, easily enough, but Mal doesn't immediately relinquish it.

"She's just rusty," the blonde emphasizes, dropping the necklace to puddle in the palm of Cruella's hand. "Doesn't mean anything." The words sound almost as defensive as Regina's earlier statement had, and once more the brunette is impressed, thankful, and amazed at Mal's easy defense of her. Perhaps they are both blinded to each other due to their shared past, but either way the minute support is welcome. "What do you think? Are we playing too rough for you?" Mal asks, and she knows it's a challenge but the question seems to have an odd note of caring, as if the question is being asked not of the battle-hardened Evil Queen but perhaps to the naive young Queen, who had been as much an innocent as she had been out for revenge. It's the type of intonation that Regina would have expected to hear in a very different setting, if she were a very different woman who was still a virgin when it came to the harsh realities of the world. In that moment, Mal is both a challenger and a nurturer, and Regina fights the flush as it tries to spread across her already dark coloring.

"I think we should get out of here," Regina responds instantly, voice quiet and a little shaky in a way she can't quite help, as if Mal's question has summoned a Regina that no longer exists, the Regina that still isn't quite strong enough to do what must be done. Cruella looks away, undeniably disappointed, and even Mal hangs her head after a while, defeated. Gathering herself, Regina finds a cruel smirk growing on her face, unseen by the others. "And go find some real trouble."

Cruella's gaze snaps back to Regina, looking for all the world like a pleased puppy, and this time when Mal's gaze settles back on Regina it isn't with the burning weight of before but rather with a gentle, caressing, warmth.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 4x15 Enter the Dragon Flashback #1 - Maleficent's castle

Regina peers timidly around the door, half-expecting to come face to face with the Dragon herself (much as she has been for the entire journey through the castle thus far). True to experience, Maleficent isn't lying in wait just beyond the door, but Regina knows she is out of places to look and this room, this somewhat messy but personal looking sitting room, has to be where Maleficent is hiding, even if the other woman is still out of sight. 

"Hello?" she calls out as she steps from behind the door, taking first one step and then another towards the center of the room. Her very intuition tells her that she is in the right place, as silly as she feels talking to what appears to be an empty room. "Maleficent?" She looks down at the spellbook clasped to her chest, as if it could shield her from whatever is coming next, as silence greets her words. "I've been studying magic," she continues hesitantly, still working under the assumption that Maleficent is there, somewhere, within earshot and that the woman may yet reveal herself if Regina can be persuasive enough. "Beginner stuff," she admits on a shakily exhaled puff of laughter, "but maybe, perhaps, you can teach me?" She hasn't stopped her slow trek into the center of the room but the more she goes on the more foolish she feels, and her she looks around more obviously, searching in the corners for the sorceress she knows is there and fighting the wild flutter of embarrassment. 

"Why don't you show me what you've learned and light that fireplace," comes an imperious voice, echoing around the room as if coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once. Regina can't place the origin, other than to assume that she has, at last, found the woman she is looking for, so she settles for giving a terrified look at the large fireplace to her left. She's stepped onto a plus carpet and is practically in the middle of a cozy fireside sitting area, and Maleficent has left little question as to what she wants, but Regina's grasp on magic is shaky enough that she wonders if she can accomplish the task. 

But she doesn't really have much of a choice, other than to turn and leave, so she gets a grip on her fear and strides determinedly closer to the fire, side-stepping an armchair until she is scant feet away from the hearth. One look at the fireplace has her pausing in her tracks again, a frustrated puff of air managing to propel her back into motion, taking one last glance into the depths of the room as if the disembodied voice would suddenly call off the challenge. When no other words were spoken, Regina looked down at her palm, willing the fireball into existence. It was small, as they always were, and only flickered a little as she tried to use sheer willpower to keep the flame sparked.

"Come on," she muttered. "Come. On." The final word sent the flame into the fireplace where it took quite happily. Unbidden, the pleased and slightly surprised smile spread across Regina's face, glad to have managed to accomplish such a seemingly simple task without more than a slight hitch. 

"That was pathetic," a voice drawled from the far corner of the room, where a screen covered a portion of the corner. Regina turned to see a woman, tall with frizzy blonde hair, and the curious way of holding herself which suggested that she was used to utter deference, walking unsteadily towards her. Her mouth dropped open as the woman stumbled slightly, arms spread wide as if to announce the majesty of her presence even though that presence was both unsteady and more than a little haggard. "But it'll do." Shocked, Regina reached for the chair next to her, hoping the solid wood would provide some measure of steadiness as Maleficent dropped onto a low chair by the fire, stretching a hand out to it as if to warm herself. "Ugh that feels nice. I haven't had a proper fire in," there's a pause, and a pale hand with dark nail polish reaches absently for the strand of hair which has falled partially across maleficent's face, as if Maleficent can't remember either the number or the rest of the sentence, but it's somewhat covered as she simply finishes with a vague, "years." She reaches for a bottle on the table next to her, removes the top to reveal a long metal spine, about the length of the bottle, which she presses to her thumb.

"What's that?" Regina asks curiously as the point breaks skin and Maleficent sighs, part irritation and part in seeming relief. The older woman smiles vacantly up at Regina as she places the spine deliberately back in the bottle.

"You won't read about this in any spellbook," the blonde brags. "A single drop of sleeping curse mixed with seawater, toadstool. Takes the edge off." Regina can feel the frown mar her face with harsh lines as Maleficent offers her a small but smug look. She looks down in an attempt to hide the expression, the disappointment and the disapproval, but Maleficent notices anyway, giving a harsh chuckle and spreading her hands wide. "What's the matter, dear? I'm not everything you expected?"

There's a small pause, Regina torn between the desire to flatter the other woman (as she would have been expected to flatter her own mother), or to say what she thought. She settles for neither with a mostly neutral sounding, "What happened to you?"

"A rose," Maleficent replies, and the answer comes so quickly and easy it's as if the answer, and the story that goes with it, have been lurking the entire time just beyond the surface. "A briar rose."

"The one you put under a sleeping curse," Regina clarifies smoothly, glad to be once more on familiar ground, to be discussing something she knows a little about and to not need to sound quite as much like the naive young girl she knows herself still to be.

"Until King Stefan," and Regina is shocked by the casual way that the next words fall from Maleficent's lips, to the extent that she misses the next few words, "undid all my work with True Love's Kiss. Do you know what?" the blonde asks, somewhat rhetorically as she reaches once more to pull the spine from the top of the bottle. "I don't even care anymore," she answers herself breathily, pressing the pointed end of the spindle, for that's what Regina now knows it to be, to her thumb. 

Regina looks down at the book still cradled in the crook of her arm, pulling it free as if feeling the weight of it would help provide her with an answer. "The Maleficent I read about, she would never just give up." She takes a few steps closer, the book waving around in the air as she talks with her hands. The blonde is looking into the fire, and gives no sign that she's even listening. "You need to remember who you really are."

That certainly got the sorceress's attention, as in a flash Maleficent's gaze snapped from the flames to Regina, the thin body draped in heavy robes crossing the distance between them with a speed that Regina hadn't even known the woman was capable of until that moment. Regina's breath caught in her throat as a gaze, sharp with anger and something else Regina couldn't label fixed on her, and the brunette hurried to step back, comparatively shorter legs struggling to keep a steady distance between them as the blonde continued her swift, but steady, advance. 

"That Maleficent had a foul temper," the dragon almost yelled, "and if you insulted her she'd turn into a dragon and eat your flesh." A surprisingly strong hand shot out to grab Regina by the shoulder as the blonde's legs finally managed to close the remaining distance between the two, despite Regina's best efforts to elude the taller woman's grasp. She can't help but gasp as that hand pulls her close, their bodies almost touching as Maleficent invades her space. Regina is finally able to identify the look in her eyes from only a moment before, and the fear that blooms in the pit of her stomach at the hungry look in Maleficent's eyes burns hot enough to make her shiver. Her hand comes up to clutch at Maleficent's elbow, as if that's going to do her much good, and stands frozen, eyes falling automatically to the thing at eye-level (Maleficent's lips) as the other woman's head lowers towards hers, tilting awkwardly as if scenting from Regina's temple to her jaw before the blonde seems to reel backwards, away from the young brunette. "It's a good thing for you I already had breakfast," the other woman mutters sullenly, pushing herself slowly away from Regina until there is once more a foot of space between them.

"Take your dusty book and get out of my castle," the blonde orders, jabbing Regina sharply in the chest with a single, long finger, and Regina, shaken from the encounter, finds herself obeying before she can truly register that she's left.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 4x15 Enter the Dragon Flashback #2 - Maleficent's Castle

There's a clang as Regina sets down an invitation, etched onto actual silver, directly on top of a bowl on the table beside Maleficent, and the noise and sudden flurry of moment is enough to snap Maleficent from her haze just in time for Regina to unceremoniously deliver the news she had really returned to impart. 

"Briar Rose's daughter is getting married," she stresses, clearly more than worked up, as if needing to compensate for Maleficent's drugged stupor. She doesn't bother with personal space, pushing in close towards the other woman and then wheeling away to pace when her agitation won't let her stay still. "A whole new generation is getting their happy ending while you," she gives a choppy gesture in Maleficent's direction, searching for the words, "sit up here and rot!"

"And why in the hell do you care so much?" Maleficent asks, words slow but also clearly an agitated challenge, leaning forward off the chaise lounge towards Regina. 

"Because if," Regina pauses, and Maleficent immediately tilts her head in curiosity, as if sensing the sudden change that had taken the wind right out of Regina's sails. Like the last time Regina had been in this castle, she takes a moment of time to marvel at the way in which this woman, so clearly drugged within an inch of losing all coherency, can suddenly regain all lucidity and look at Regina in that very peculiar way that the younger woman is quickly coming to associate with Maleficent alone. She hasn't ever seen that particular gaze and doesn't know how to categorize it - it's one part shrewd assessment, one part calm knowledge, as if Maleficent can unravel all the layers and see the truth at Regina's core, and another part pure hunger, as if the dragon is at that very moment contemplating eating her, "someone as powerful as you can't get their revenge, that means I never will." The last words fall quietly into a silent room as Maleficent rises slowly to her feet. 

It feels almost like deja vu as Maleficent closes the gap between them, only there's something about the movement that doesn't give Regina the urge to step back. Maleficent's head is lowered as she reaches out, thin fingers tenderly cupping Regina's chin, so that their faces remain at more or less the same level. "You've had someone taken from you too," she says, and it's not a question, emotion shining in her eyes as she strokes along Regina's jaw with the back of her hand before letting it fall to the brunette's shoulder.

"Yes," Regina answers, even the single word shaky. "And the girl who's responsible lives and breathes, and I still don't have my revenge." She somehow, suddenly, close to tears, and the obvious sympathy and understanding on Maleficent's face doesn't seem to be helping her keep the tears at bay. 

"Do you want some advice from me?" Maleficent asks, voice tender and caring as her fingers reach up once more to trace the planes of Regina's face. The brunette raises a hand, clasping the blonde's wrist as she nods earnestly. "Give up. Find another hobby." The blonde turns away sadly before walking away, leaving Regina gaping after her in utter disbelief. 

"No!" she exclaims, vehemently rebelling against this so-called advice. She takes the three short strides to the table to snatch up the discarded invitation and brandish it at Maleficent as if it were a weapon that could help something get through to the villain. "Isn't this a reason to get up? To turn back into a dragon? To fight?"

Maleficent barely moves, back to Regina. "I can't." The words sound stilted and disjointed. 

"Doesn't this make your blood boil?"

"Didn't you hear me, stupid girl?" Maleficent yells, whipping around and closing the distance between them once more. "I can't! I. Can't. Turn into a dragon anymore." Maleficent's gaze has gone from angry to anguished to simply saddened in less than a second flat, and Regina can't help but feel the same obvious despair in her own soul. "I lost the fire long ago."

"Then let's get that fire back," Regina says simply, for lack of a better thing to say, as if that's all there is to it. And perhaps that is all there is to it.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 4x15 Enter the Dragon - Regina's vault

Regina heaves a heavy sigh that sounds too loud to her sensitive ears and stands, walking across her vault to tidy up some bottles that she can see were knocked more than a little astray. When she had suggested finding some real trouble the night before, she had definitely not been thinking of the type of trouble the Queens of Darkness had sought out, which was really more akin to the type of trouble the Lost Boys would likely be getting into in a few years. Given what they were all capable of, Regina supposes she should be thankful, but the hangover she is sporting, and the mess they had managed to make out of her vault, make it a little hard to manage rational thought. All she knows is that she is well and truly glad that she hadn't suggested they return to the Mayor's actual house because, while Henry was staying with Emma for the foreseeable future and the house was standing empty, at least the property destruction was guaranteed to stay at a minimum when no one could be sure what the effect of breaking this trinket or the other would be. In the vault, a broken vial could be a magic spell with dire consequences; in her home, breaking a vase only meant getting out a broom to clean up the shards.

She hears the slow deliberate click of heels but doesn't turn around to face the intruder. She's not surprised to find herself suddenly not alone, and while she has her guess as to who the person is (and knows she's right), she knows it's Mal the very instant that heavy, hungry, Mal stare settles onto her form.

"Sorry we couldn't stay to clean," the blonde says breezily, sweeping her coat off her shoulders as Regina carefully returns a bottle to its proper place.

"Oh, that's okay," Regina hums, sounding as unfortunately haggard as she feels. Perhaps she wouldn't have noticed if it weren't for the fact that Mal sounds like her usual self, and while Regina could do her best to wrap herself in all the grandeur and attitude of the Evil Queen, or of the Mayor, she knows that the gravel in her voice will betray her. "You need the beauty sleep more than I do," she adds, a small smirk at the barb. She's not entirely certain how old the others are, as they had run in different circles until much later, but she has very distinct memories of time spent with Mal in her castle back when Regina was a very young Queen, and Mal had been an established presence by then. And while the exact number eludes her, she has always enjoyed teasing the dragon about her age when opportunity presents itself. To do so now just makes the entire scene feel like something out of her past, though she seems to remember that mornings were easier then, all those years ago in the Enchanted Forest. Perhaps the nearly 30 years in ageless limbo had given her a false sense of youth.

She takes a seat on the closest surface, a divan with just enough space for two, wondering if Mal will join her or remain standing. The blonde gives her a look of fond amusement at the barb, but doesn't otherwise react to it as she folds her jacket and drapes it carefully over her arm.

"It's good to see you again, Regina," Mal says, heels tapping out a slow tempo on the stone floor as she approaches the divan. "Hope you had fun last night."

"Last night, yes," Regina replies easily, and it's not a lie. Somewhere around the fifth shot of the night she had decided to just give in to herself, to the others in the room, and had managed to (for the most part) leave everything taking place outside the vault behind. Those women had been, in a sense, her only friends from her past, and when they hadn't all been trying to kill each other there was an easy sense of camaraderie, of familiarity, that combined quite headily with the weightlessness that came with having a poor moral compass. "This morning?" she looks up at Mal as her hands fumble with the ties and buttons of her jacket, only realizing just then that she hasn't even managed to get entirely re-dressed from the night before. "No." The single word is practically a joke in and of itself, given that she is still fumbling to put her clothes back on while Mal has managed to re-dress, leave, looking as disheveled as Regina did at the time (and Regina did have to be somewhat smug about that fact), and return looking perfectly coiffed in the same amount of time.

"Maybe I can help with this world's version of magic," the dragon offers, reaching into her coat pocket to produce two white pills, which she holds out to Regina in the palm of her hand. Regina stares at them, somehow seeing and yet not understanding while also fighting the distraction of her hungover mind as she takes in the shockingly perfect image of blood red nails contrasting against the pale skin of the slender and delicate hand. Hands that she knows are more than they seem, for they are an instant away from turning into a dragon's claw. Mistaking Regina's distracted silence for wariness, Mal's hand never wavers as her voice takes on an amused tint. "They're not poison, they're aspirin," she explains patiently, as if Regina might not recognize two aspirin when she sees them. "They help with the pain."

"I know what they are," Regina replies somewhat snidely, "it's just you're not usually nice." She holds her hand out for the pills nevertheless, wondering exactly where this version of Mal has come from. She has plenty of memories of her and Mal doing the morning-after scene, and not a single one includes aspirin, or anything else above and beyond the status quo level of care from Maleficent (which is to say anything beyond a small amount of fondness mixed with tolerance). She certainly hadn't expected it when she awoke just in time to see the other woman to the door. Mal drops them into her palm without hesitation before walking past her to primp in the mirror.

"Nice has nothing to do with it," she informs the Evil Queen, needlessly touching up her perfect curls, which only serves to remind Regina that her hair is looking less sleek than usual, having been well and truly mussed and then half-heartedly finger combed back into something resembling submission. "I need you sharp for tonight."

"For what? More games?"

"No." Mal turns from the mirror to face her again, and that look, the one from last night, the one that sends shivers of anticipation down Regina's spine, is on her face, replacing the amused tenderness as if it had never left. "No more games." The blonde paces back towards the entrance to the vault and Regina, senses on high alert and feeling suddenly restless, stands, facing the mirror and needlessly adjusting her now fastened jacket. That phrase is a common one, between them, but it carries with it a strange sense of foreboding, as though the words themselves carry memories of the last time they were uttered to hang in the air between them. Regina remembers that it was the moment the other shoe dropped, and everything swiftly devolved into something she dearly hopes is not going to be repeated now, in her vault, or in the future. Perhaps it's the hangover, but she no longer feels any inclination to sling spells at Mal, nor to return to the version of herself that was desperate enough to have done so to achieve her ends. The history Mal has brought with her has been primarily good, comforting and familiar and nostalgic, but Regina has forgotten that the woman also has the ability to bring forth more than just memories of her as a young Queen, that she also holds the horrible truths and memories from the times where she was at the very peak of her darkest self. Those, Regina has no urge to revisit. She hopes that Mal, poor Mal who had been so lovingly maligned and betrayed in those times by that Regina, has no desire to revisit them either.

She doesn't. "You wanna know why we're in this town? The fact is, we are after the same thing as you: the Author." Hearing the words is like being doused in ice water as Regina feels the weight of cold realization settle over her. Regina had expected to have to stay entangled with the Queens of Darkness for long enough to foil their plot, but she hadn't expected their goal and hers to dove-tail quite so neatly. It seems like every time Regina turns around, there is something she isn't quite prepared to handle popping out of this undercover assignment that Snow had ever-so-nicely gifted her with. She makes a mental note to give the woman something hideous as part of a Charming-Swan-Mills family gift exchange that she will no doubt be forced to participate in.

"How do you know about the Author?" she asks Mal, turning back around and hoping to play off the long pause as she combs her fingers once more through her hair. 

"Rumpelstiltskin. He spilled the whole story to Cruella back in New York." The way that Mal holds herself, utterly still and more than a little predatory, reminds Regina to be on her guard.

"Well good luck finding him. I've been looking for months," Regina offers, a touch flippantly, as if she thinks their search is wasted effort. 

"But you've been going about it all wrong," Mal explains, the sweet patience from earlier once more coloring her voice as she steps closer. "What you need are some new allies with some new leads on this Author."

When she stops a few feet away, Regina takes a casual step to close most of the distance. "And these new leads, do they have anything to do with this powerful magic you're hiding?" She intentionally places a few wondering pauses into the question, voice sweet and breathy on top of the gravel of the hangover she hasn't managed to vanquish just yet.

The tilt of Mal's head is the only acknowledgement that her attempt was even really considered. "Before I let you in on that secret, I've got a little job for you," she informs the shorter brunette, still standing close enough to see every micro-expression that may cross Regina's face. For whatever reason, Regina feels no need to step away.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 4x15 Enter the Dragon - in front of the Library/Clock Tower

The streets of Storybrooke typically empty out soon after dark, and so it's like looking at a ghost town as Regina props herself up against the library doors. The howling wind doesn't help matters, giving the whole scene an accompanying eerie howl as the wind whistles through abandoned streets, although it's the wind that has likely driven even the town's night owls indoors. Her hair ruffles in the wind, tangling the shoulder length strands into small elf knots, but Regina makes no attempt to tame it, inwardly resigning herself to yet another night of well-mused hair and another morning of a finger-combed style. At the very least, the causation will be much more innocent tonight than it was the night previously.

Charming's truck idles into view at the mouth of an alley down the street, far enough away that it is likely not to be spotted by anyone other than Regina, who is already looking for it. Emma is clearly visible in the front seat, gaze focused on Regina, and Regina spares the truck only a brief glance and a slight lift of her chin before returning her gaze straight ahead to the empty street. She hopes that the blonde can't see the uneasy expression on her face, because she knows that if she can, she will never manage to get rid of the Sheriff and she has quite enough to do that is not made easier by having the Savior hovering over her every move. She is nervous, yes, for the unknown task ahead of her, but the nerves are made worse knowing that Emma is watching. Last night had been complicated, but essentially easy, with nothing but the thrum of anticipation in her ears. Tonight, that thrum has already been twisted into an anxiousness that she doubts will have done her any favors by the time the night is through. 

The growl of an engine cuts through the air as headlights turn onto the street, and Regina stands a little bit straighter as she recognizes the shape of Cruella's car coming slowly down the street. Something about the approach puts her even more on edge, and she realizes exactly what it is as the car comes to a stop in front of her, close enough that Regina can see there is no driver. Well, that explains the slow pace and the remarkably straight line down the street, although it does nothing to assuage her unease as the doors, first the driver's and then the passenger, swing open on their own. 

"Ready to take a drive?" Mal's voice comes from directly behind her and this time Regina is taken by surprise, whipping around to face the tall blonde and wondering just how long she had been standing there. She's normally so attuned to Mal's presence, to the weight of her stare and the faintly smoky musk of her perfume, that it makes the sudden appearance even more startling. She recovers quickly enough, turning shock into a sly smile of greeting, but it takes her brain a little bit longer to form suitable words.

"You want me to get in that?"

"Cruella enchanted it to drive itself, or you can take the wheel if you prefer," Mal informs her, which answers her original question only in the way it avoids it entirely. 

"Yes, I'd very much prefer," Regina says absently, fairly certain that it defies the laws of nature for something Cruella, a poor driver herself, enchanted to drive itself to possibly be any safer than the woman herself, and reasons that it's therefore probably worse (nevermind the very steady driving she had already observed). She's not thinking too hard about that though, eyes roaming around looking for Ursula and Cruella in the shadows and steeling herself against their likely sudden appearances so that she is not caught as off guard as she had been with Mal. Not seeing them, she casually gestures towards the empty car and empty street. "Where are the other two?"

"Don't worry about them," Mal says, entirely unconcerned. "It's just you and me tonight. Like old times." The blonde somehow manages to half-purr the words, each one leaving her mouth like a separate and distinct caress. Regina doesn't remember much time spent off having solo adventures with only Mal for company, or rather with her as Mal's only company, but she definitely remembers spending quite a bit of quality time with the blonde that definitely didn't involve a squid or any puppies.

Smirking sinfully at the memories, she casts her gaze back towards Maleficent ever so briefly and levels her body off the building behind her, stalking without a word to the waiting car and very specifically not even daring to glance at Emma, still waiting and watching just down the road.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 4x15 Enter the Dragon - Cruella's car, outside of Marco's

Sitting in the driver's seat had not necessarily equated to driving, Regina soon found out, and she had spent the entire trip ignoring Mals' ever-present stare and trying not to be wholly unnerved by the fact that she had zero control over the car whatsoever. Since it drove itself, there wasn't even harshly spoken directions to punctuate the silence, nor was there anything to distract herself from. As she wasn't driving, she forced her eyes to remain forward, on the road, and not on any mirrors, already well familiar with the scenery passing by.

"We're here," Mal announced as the car pulled to a stop, and Regina doesn't even have to take a second look at the location to know where they are.

"This can't be right," she says, turning to face Mal. "This is Marco's place." Then, realizing that Mal isn't quite as familiar with the peasants as the Mayor herself has come to be, she elaborates, "the town handyman. The only magical object you'll find around here is duct tape." It's meant to be biting and sarcastic, but Regina remembers the first time she had discovered tape of any kind: something that could be wrapped like string but bind like glue, that was, in a way, a magic of its own. She also remembers the last time she was in the shop, just days ago, and the feeling of foreboding that has been growing ever since Emma idled into sight at the mouth of that alley has turned into a full fledged roar as she realizes that whatever happens next will not be something she will like. 

Mal is entirely unruffled by her comment, brushing it aside without a thought. "I assure you, there is something far more valuable. Actually, someone." Regina leans forward into the small pause, hanging on Maleficent's every word and wishing that she could stop the train wreck she is sure to be seeing momentarily. Unlike the near-miss of the night before, this is not a situation that Regina can just poof them all out of. "That naughty little piece of pine he calls a son," Mal elaborates, noticing Regina's change in posture and capitulating to the unspoken request without thought. 

"The magical object you're after is Pinocchio?" Disbelief coats her words, because the entire thing makes very little sense. 

"He has information about the Author and we intend to make him tell us."

"Which would be a good plan if I hadn't tried already," Regina points out, somewhat relieved that she can come up with something to turn this whole mission around. Having tried the same thing once, she can safely say that it was a very half-baked idea, and is definitely not worth trying again to see if different results can be obtained. "When August was turned back into a boy his memory was wiped. He doesn't remember anything," Regina concludes regretfully, not faking the sentiment at all. She doesn't want the other women to get their hands on the Author, and is willing to work actively to thwart their plans where possible, but she doesn't have to fake disappointment when it means recounting her own previous failures.

"Maybe the trouble was you not asking your questions more forcefully," Mal says, and she sounds more like the dragon of old, of when Regina had first met her and hadn't yet learned to navigate her tempers, of before Mal had even begun to tolerate her naivete and curiosity, and it's enough to make Regina sit a little straighter. 

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asks, defensive as she and Mal once more head smoothly into the familiar push and pull of contentious conversation. 

Rather than take the bait though, sending them spiraling into a series of increasingly snappy remarks, Mal merely sighs and says "I'm beginning to worry that Cruella and Ursula were right." Her eyes are actively avoiding Regina now, facing forward and darting from one part of the dash to another but never off to the side where Regina is eyeing her with a challenge that she clearly does not want to meet. "You've spent so much time around heroes you've forgotten who you really are." Mal's eyes flick up to meet Regina's, and somehow the gaze isn't at all challenging. The sentiment, however, does explain the very strange way that Mal has been babying her, like a dragonet with a broken wing. But Regina can't afford to meet her softness with softness of her own.

"I'd be careful questioning my commitment," she grinds out, eyes flashing angrily, but as always, Mal is hardly moved. For someone with dragon's fire flickering within them, Mal has always been rather cool, and calm, only flying into utter rage when most provoked and at the most unpredictable of times. For Regina, whose passion and rage has always boiled close to the surface and whose version of cool is thinly disguised heat, Mal's non-responses have always been endlessly frustrating. That effect, at least, has not changed. 

"You want to prove to me you're the Evil Queen I remember, go inside there now and steal that little boy." The words hit Regina too hard for the phrasing to be entirely incidental, and the brunette knows that Mal expects her to balk at the idea of kidnapping a boy who is, in many ways, not much different than Henry himself. Which is exactly why she finds herself throwing open the car door with a wordless snarl and stalking away into the night.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 4x15 Enter the Dragon Flashback #3 - the Burning Tree

"So there's a tree I burned that's still on fire," Maleficent says, staring hard at her throne as if by staring intently enough it, like the aforementioned tree, can burst into flame. Regina stands a pace behind her, unwilling both to come to close and to stray too far from the blonde. It has taken an afternoon of creative convincing, an afternoon of brainstorming and the pooling of Maleficent's knowledge and Regina's unwavering faith, and an afternoon of a few other activities, for them to even make it this far. Either way, Regina is not willing to admit defeat, and she is dead set on helping the older blonde regain her everlasting flame. "Who cares?" She turns to face Regina, taking one step towards her as if the two women are connected in some way (Regina has not been able to ignore the way neither of them seems to be able to stray very far from the other before some excuse can bring them back within the other's personal space). "What does it matter?"

"That's your spark," Regina insists, like she knows for certain that it is even though at this point it's nothing more than a hunch. Maleficent is once more very close to sounding defeated, and it's not something Regina wants to hear. "That's what's going to reignite the dragon inside you." She pauses for a moment to let that concept sink in before striding past Maleficent and reaching straight for the item half hidden under the throne, bypassing the woman's staff in favor of something a little more subtle, a little more personal, and perhaps a little more intimate. She hopes they have reached that point by now, at any rate. As with everything Maleficent, Regina is quickly learning that almost anything she does can blow up in her face faster than she can say 'Rumpelstiltskin'. She pulls the horned headdress from the small dais, making sure that she treats the item with respect as she knows it would not be taken well were she to be careless with this very important item, not when she is so close to convincing Maleficent that not everything is lost. "Now get dressed," she demands, thrusting the headdress towards Maleficent with both hands as if the item is a crown even as she summons all of the queenly imperiousness into her voice that she can manage. Standing a full step above Maleficent doesn't hurt the effect, even though the height advantage only brings them level with each other. 

Impressively, it seems to work, and even with the slightest cast of resentment to her gaze, Maleficent does as she is told and grabs the item, striding away to a mirror and making quick work of tucking her hair up underneath it. It's somewhat astonishing to Regina, who had expected the mulish woman to take more time, but it seems that once Maleficent has decided to make a move, there is little need for her to drag her feet on the issue any longer. Still, the look on her face as Regina leads her from the castle and down to the burning tree makes it clear that she is not entirely pleased to be going along with this scheme of Regina's, and it's the sort of gaze that makes Regina really hope that everything pans out. 

That hope grows with every step they take towards the tree, and it feels like a very long trek indeed (though it really isn't too much of a walk from the castle, as it turns out) with that gaze focused on her by the time they arrive there and Regina realizes that she has no idea how on earth to proceed. Her rudimentary grasp of magic and magical concepts has enabled her to connect the dots at least this much, but the actual theoretical knowledge of how to get Maleficent her fire back is completely beyond her grasp. Luckily, it seems as if Maleficent herself knows, or has a theory she'd thought up on the walk there, because when Regina stops hesitantly some distance away from the tree, Maleficent continues the walk until she's closer. Regina doesn't want to break whatever the moment is as the Dragon stares at the tree, staff arm held stiffly away from her body so that the butt of the staff is clear of the ground. She observes the tense lines of the blonde's back, shape still hidden beneath the blonde's heavy and voluptuous robes that somehow do nothing to hide the obvious tension as Maleficent seems to stare at the tree, gaze one part challenge and one part anxiousness. She holds herself to utter stillness for a second more, and then inhales, arms raising as if the powerful posture, the classical magical stereotype, will help ease the strain of trying to summon the large blaze directly to her, or into her, with nothing more than an inhalation.

Whatever it is seems to help, as the flames are drawn towards the blonde in two long ropes, but the strain is too much for Maleficent to sustain and she falters, slumping dramatically as she gasps and chokes on an exhale before straightening and trying again with the very next breath. This time, the effort is sustained for long enough to strip the tree of fire, and the dragon inhales the very last of the fiery tendrils before falling to the ground, coughing violently and clearly exhausted by the efforts. Regina rushes forward to offer support, realizing that Maleficent must be truly exhausted and possibly injured as the blonde leans into her without hesitation, breathing still labored and loud. 

"Did it work?" she asks eagerly, wanting to wait until the other woman is well enough to breathe easily before asking but unable to help herself from asking the first moment she's able to.

"Not sure," the woman gasps out, clearly not quite recovered enough for easy speech. But Regina is hardly paying attention to the answer by the time it's given, as movement in her periphery catches her attention and she turns to see a contingent of horses, knights in gleaming armor sitting easily astride them, coming their direction.

"We're about to find out," Regina breathes, trying not to sound too alarmed as she straightens and turns towards the riders. "Look."

With slightly more effort, still breathing heavily, Maleficent turns to look where Regina indicated as the five riders and the few accompanying footsoldiers come to a halt a few yards away.

"Hello Stefan," Maleficent grinds out, still sounding tired and winded, but the venom in her voice makes the words seem stronger. 

"Maleficent," the rider in front, King Stefan, says in greeting, though it seems like more of a habit than anything else. "I promise, if you intend to take away Aurora's happiness you will fail, just like you failed with Briar Rose."

"You made sure of that, didn't you?" Maleficent responded scathingly, though exhaustion made it sound somewhat haunted and anguished. 

He looks pretty ready to make sure it happens again, and without hesitation waves his men forward. "Men! Seize them!"

There's the sound of blades leaving their scabbard and then the butt of Maleficent's staff is hitting the ground with a thump that somehow echoes impossibly loudly. Everything seems to freeze as the glass ball at the top of the staff glows a fluorescent purple as a dark, nearly black, cloud of purple smoke starts to gather at Maleficent's feet. Horses call out nervously as the men shift, uncertain, and Maleficent's motions never waver as she slowly pulls the smoke upwards with her free hand so that the cloud swallows her whole. The entire thing swells, and Regina only has a moment to be terrified as she realizes that she too is being swallowed as the edges of the smoke engulf her, and then it's shrinking and Maleficent can clearly be seen as it vanishes entirely, leaving her panting and even more exhausted than before. 

The men waste no time rushing in. "It would appear that you've made a fool of yourself once again, Maleficent," Stefan says, riding closer once the two women have been ringed by his men, blades pointing unerringly in their direction. 

The blonde glowers up at him, seemingly unafraid of the sword pointed at her heart, and Regina tries very hard to follow in the older woman's lead and not be afraid herself.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 4x15 Enter the Dragon - Cruella's car, outside of Marco's pt. 2

Maleficent is standing, facing the car but still within a step of the vehicles door, as Regina kicks the door to Geppetto's shut behind her. It's been some time since Henry was as small as Pinocchio is now, and she hadn't held a child in her arms (except Neal, on rare occasion) in what felt like forever. Unlike everything else she did with Mal, it was the one thing whose familiarity couldn't be tainted and skewed by the memories of her past and her familiarity with Mal, and she had to fight to stop from being utterly unnerved by the situation. She had managed to say what she had to in order to get Emma to back off, and none of it had been a lie save for what the Savior herself had known as a half-truth, but having Mal standing, motionless and imposing, staring expectantly at the door like a cat waiting for a mouse to resurface was unsettling enough to hammer home how deeply she had managed to get herself into this mess. She had known, of course, that she was going to need to do some unsavory things in the name of this mission, but she had always drawn the line at harming children (with the slight exception of that ordeal with Hansel and Gretel).

She crosses the street without hesitation, though her grip shifts on the sleeping child, trying to unobtrusively pull him closer. Mal doesn't move as she approaches, so she pulls open the car door with one hand, struggling to shift the boy's dead weight in her grip and managing with the practiced semi-ease of someone who has had to accomplish the same move many times before. Mal makes no move to help her and Regina avoids eye contact as she leans forward to place Pinocchio into the backseat, careful not to bump his head on the door frame or on the back of the seat. Mal's gaze feels soft on her back, not hard or heavy as it so often is but almost warm and tender as she looks in at her through the window. Even knowing she's being watched like a hawk can't stop Regina from reflexively reaching to tuck the boy a little more securely into the blanket Regina had conjured to wrap around him, as if unable to turn off the mother in her. Far from being annoyed, as Regina would have expected, Maleficent just looks amused, lips fixed in a tender, proud smile as Regina pulls her upper body from the depths of the car and straightens. The former Queen forces a triumphant, satisfied smile onto red lips, to match the blonde's smile as their eyes meet over the top of the car, and Mal's full smile, painted a red that makes Regina wonder if the taller woman had borrowed her lipstick when getting dressed to leave the vault that morning, stretches wider.

"It's good to have you back," Mal declares, and still feeling uneasy all Regina does is offer her a curt nod in response. She'd like to say it's good to be back but, well, at this precise moment, it's nothing of the kind. Mal doesn't seem to think anything is weird of the nod, of the vaguely pleased smile that Regina manages to flash at her across the car, and without another word, the blonde slides into her seat.

Regina spares only a moment more, eyes on the phone in her gloved hand. This folly of Snow's is going to get someone killed, and if there's one thing the night has taught her so far, it's that having Emma around makes it nearly impossible for her to do what she needs to do. It's as if the Savior brings with her an entirely new set of anxieties, and Regina can't afford the distraction. Mind made up, the phone slips from her hand as she enters the car, and she doesn't make a move to retrieve it.

Car doors close, twin thumps echoing across the empty street, and then the car roars to life.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 4x15 Enter the Dragon Flashback #4 - the Burning Tree, part 2

They haven't been walking for long, but Regina is already tired of being a prisoner and already exasperated to the hilt at how all of the fight seems to have been taken right out of Maleficent. The taller woman has been silent the entire walk so far, snarling wordlessly as their hands were bound and shoved out in front to walk, a good amount of distance between them, before the soldiers. Regina imagines that they feel safer with some distance between them and the two sorceresses, if they can be called that (with Regina's shaky grasp of basic concepts and Maleficent's utter resignation), but it also means that the two women could, if they wanted, act quickly enough to free themselves that the soldiers wouldn't be able to stop them in time. And it's with that thought in mind, and the sense of daring and adventure that she seems to have around Maleficent and only Maleficent, she focuses her attention on her hands and wills a flame into existence.

It's a small fireball, as always, and it flickers, but it's perfect for Regina's needs as it does its job without drawing any attention from the soldiers. Only Maleficent notices, when the sizzle of burning rope and the faintest plumes of smoke reach her senses, and Regina is slightly dismayed, though not discouraged, to find that Maleficent is looking at her like she's an idiot.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm not going out like this," Regina mutters, focused on the slowly burning rope and trying not to let the negativity from the woman next to her disrupt the flow of energy needed to maintain the fireball. 

"You can't fight, there's too many of them," Maleficent is quick to point out, her whole body twisting to face Regina, and Regina is starting to think that the older woman is trying to get them caught. 

"Guess we'll have to hope my fireballs have improved," Regina says wryly, knowing that they haven't but wondering if perhaps she can keep them off kilter for long enough to make an escape. 

"You can't defeat them." 

"You're right, not without a dragon's help," Regina responds easily, a touch of desperation in her tone and more than a little disappointment. She had been wrong to have wanted to come here, and maybe Rumpelstiltskin had been right. He had sent her away to learn a valuable lesson, and she had been too naively excited about getting to meet the infamous Dragon to understand that the lesson was, as Maleficent had tried to teach her earlier, that she wasn't anything like she had been expected and that the blonde had nothing of value to teach anymore. Poor Maleficent was nothing more than an example of how not to accomplish her revenge, and with that thought in mind Regina found her own resolve strengthening with every second Maleficent spent trying to convince her otherwise. 

The fireball flares and the ropes snap as Regina pulls her hands apart and then she's free, wheeling around to face the men with a fireball blazing in her hand. They're wary, too wary to approach right away, and that can only mean good things for Regina, who wouldn't have been able to defend herself if they'd all rushed her at once. With an elated grin she sends the fireball to smash into one of the mounted soldiers and tries to summon a new one with a thought. Elation falters as the energy flow stops, and she shakes her hands as if the motion will re-spark the fire and send it to pool in the palm of her hand. Panic, real panic, is creeping up on her, as she tries in vain to focus and she's vaguely aware that Maleficent has placed herself somewhat behind her, arms still bound at the wrist and of no use to her at all. 

"Kill her!" King Stefan roars, sensing that something is wrong and deciding that it is safe enough to make a charge. Regina stumbles backwards, all thoughts of even attempting to summon a fireball forgotten in her blind panic, but then all of the sounds around her seem to vanish as a giant cloud of smoky purple magic rises up next to her. The men seem more concerned with that than they do with her, and Regina slightly slows her panicked backpedal, edging out of the way as the cloud gets closer and closer as it grows. This time, when it clears there isn't an exhausted sorceress beside her, but a dragon.

There's mindless panic among the men for a moment. Stefan reins in his horse, looking as if he is still considering a fight, but as his mount tries to wheel around again to flee he thinks better of it.

"Retreat!" he yells as the dragon takes flight.

"Look who's back," Regina breathes out, satisfied and more than a little in awe of the dragon who seems to effortlessly sail through the air, breathing enough fire on the men below to ensure that the two women will be left alone.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 4x15 Enter the Dragon Flashback #5 - Aurora's Bedroom

Regina can't help but think of her own castle, and it's likely lax security, as she and Maleficent easily gain access to Princess Aurora's chambers, where the girl is sitting in front of her vanity, brushing her hair and humming a little tune. Maleficent had paused just inside the doorway, observing, before handing her staff off to Regina with an almost soft smile and a gentle touch to the brunette's elbow before moving off into the room. Whatever softness Regina had just seen seems to melt off of her like water and she all but stalks further into the room, footfalls softened by thick carpeting until she is already looming up behind Aurora, who realizes much too late that she isn't alone. 

"You must be Aurora," Maleficent says and Aurora starts violently at the surprise, eyes wide in fear even though Maleficent's voice is carefully kind, as though the sorceress doesn't want to make this whole revenge thing needlessly unpleasant, as if they are just two ordinary people meeting in an ordinary situation. "Briar Rose's sweet-smelling bud of a daughter." The young redhead is standing now, movements slowed by caution and uncertainty.

"Maleficent," Aurora says, voice trembling slightly in fear but with an assuredness that says she knows exactly what the blonde is therefore. "But my father--"

"Said he was going to protect you?" Maleficent's voice is low and sweet, like talking to a very young and innocent child, and while Regina has definitely been talked down to by the older woman as if she were a child, she's never been made into such an infant as Maleficent's tone makes Aurora in that moment. "He failed. I was going to kill him, you know. I was going to kill your mother too, until I realized that they would suffer far worse if they were alive to see what I'm going to do to you."

There's a brief moment of utter stillness and then Aurora is trying to sprint past Maleficent, but she's too far away from the older woman when she starts and her skirts tangle her legs up and it looks almost easy as Maleficent catches her by the arm and spins her back around to face her. 

"My mother defeated you," Aurora says bravely, arm still caught in Maleficent's vice-like grip, "as shall I. All it will take is what I have, and you never will." The idea seems to have sparked some courage into the young woman, who is boldly leaning closer to Maleficent to practically spit the words into the other woman's face.

"True love?" Maleficent guesses, though it's clear she doesn't think much of the concept, grasp on Aurora's arm slipping from above the elbow to land just over her wrist. "Don't count on it. I have my own quite special curse in mind for your Prince Phillip," she informs the redhead, and there's a flash of light glinting dully off metal and Regina watches as Maleficent drives the point of the spindle hard into the woman's finger.

"No!" Aurora cries out, but the word dies out on her tongue even as she utters it and in a second more she has succumbed to the full effect of the sleeping curse, no longer mixed with seawater and toadstool. Maleficent is prepared to have the young woman turn suddenly to dead weight in her grasp, halting her descent to the floor with a single hand gasping the young woman's slender neck. Her hand carefully cradles the woman's head, ensuring that she isn't too terribly jostled as she lowers her gently to the bed, hoisting the young woman's legs up onto the bed as soon as her upper body is securely, and gently, laid out on the bed. The motions seem both overly caring and efficient, as if Maleficent is used to carrying women to bed, cursed or not. Regina tries not to think too much about that as Maleficent stands over the bed, expression unreadable.

"That was inspired," Regina says, now a few feet away from the bed, still clutching Maleficent's staff to her with both hands. 

"Well it never would have happened if it wasn't for you," Maleficent tells her, attention easily directed away from the sleeping woman on the bed between them. "You reminded me of who I am." Regina does have to concede that while Maleficent had worn her washed out, curse addicted persona rather well, that the woman carried off that particular brand of dishevelment perfectly, there is something just that much better about the new, or old, persona she now wears. Maleficent, clearly, wears the self-assured villain look like a second skin, and she looks flawless while doing it. "Thank you."

The words are sincere, and Regina can't help but blush ever so slightly under the genuine praise that somehow makes the entire day worth it. She isn't at all surprised to realize that she would happily spend another day, or another hundred days, just like that one, with just her and the older blonde against the world, if they could all end like this.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 4x15 Enter the Dragon - Gold's cabin

Regina follows Mal through the door of the cabin, torn between wanting to look around inquisitively and being mesmerized by the woman's saunter as she neatly removes the coat from narrow shoulders and hangs it up behind the door, a familiar gesture in an obviously familiar place. 

"Gold's cabin?" Regina asks incredulously. She wasn't sure where she thought the girls had been staying, aside from the fact that they clearly weren't staying at Granny's, but she had definitely not expected the Queens of Darkness to be borrowing real estate from the Dark One. "What are we doing here?"

"We needed someplace out of the way to hang our headdresses and hide our kidnapped puppets and this little hovel became available to us," Mal responds, closing the door behind them both in yet another little display of domesticity that speaks of having made herself at home in the cabin, despite how snarky the response had been. But the very fact that it's Gold's cabin, and not one of the other empty ones that exist near the fringes of the town, has set alarm bells ringing in Regina's mind and she has a sneaking suspicion that a piece of the puzzle has just fallen into place. Rather than make her feel better, it just makes her feel faintly ill.

"No," she says in utter disbelief. "Your dark magic, it's not a spell or an object." She hesitates, not wanting to voice the inevitable, and the silence makes the corner of Mal's mouth twitch up into a slight smirk. Almost inaudibly, she manages to force out the next word, "It's..."

"That's right, dearie," comes Gold's familiar voice from a darkened corner of the cabin. Mal's head tilts towards the corner in question, wordlessly indicating that she should turn and, horror growing, Regina slowly turns as directed. The smirk on the blonde's face is not unkind, and is more pleased at having managed to pull one over on the brunette, but Regina is too surprised to really notice anything but the fact that she has been truly, utterly blindsided. "It's me." He steps from the shadows and panic grows as Regina's gaze is drawn to the Dark One's dagger, clasped loosely in one of Gold's hands for all to see, and she can barely bring herself to tear her eyes away as the entire game changes in an instant. "You didn't really think I'd stay banished for long now, did you?"

Regina's head shook ruefully, a touch of hysteria just barely at bay. "No, I didn't." And truly she hadn't, if only because she couldn't bring herself to dare hope enough to believe it.

"I learned quite a bit about myself on my little journey outside Storybrooke. You were right Regina," he offers, and Regina offers him an insincere smile in return, "sometimes the teacher needs to learn from his students. And sometimes you need to fall very far to finally see the light."

"Well then you've finally accepted the same truth I have," Regina says, recovered somewhat from the shock and once more ready to try and play the game. It was easy to forget, with as much time as she had spent around Mal, just exactly how it was to spar with someone else, and it was even worse that Gold had been watching and observing her for almost her entire life, cursed years included. In some ways, he knew her better than she knew herself, and that only made the stakes that much higher. "You can't get your happy ending without finding the Author." If the words come out a little smug, it's because she's right, and because she'd thought of it first. The fact that, in her own failed efforts, had discovered that it was nearly impossible, made her feel a bit better, considering that she likely wouldn't enjoy what the Queens of Darkness and Rumpelstiltskin would come up with if they'd managed to find him. "I suppose that puts us on the same side."

"I suppose it does," he admits quietly, as the door swings open to reveal Cruella, her arms full of Pinocchio, who she is holding more like a sack of flour than like a child. Regina winces at the uncoordinated motions, glad that she had well and truly knocked the boy out as Cruella crosses the room and all but tosses the boy into a chair. Ursula stalks into the cabin behind her, not sparing a glance at anyone else. "And now, with the help of the very real boy you've acquired we can take our first steps."

"What are you going to do?" Regina asks casually, as if discussing the weather, but she gets the impression that this moment, like many others before it, is yet another make-or-break moment for this undercover mission.

"Step aside and I'll show you." Regina doesn't move. "Or have you gone soft?"

Leather gloves stretch painfully tight across her knuckles as her hands, down by her sides, curl into fists. Aside from that single movement, there is no other change that might alert anyone to the fact that she is utterly furious at having been trapped into this ridiculous position, all for Snow White, where she is forced to risk her life, and the life of a child, just so that she doesn't end up blowing her cover. "Never," she answers with a light chuckle, because that's the only answer she has to give. 

There's not a single hint of movement from behind her, where Maleficent has joined Cruella and Ursula behind Pinocchio's chair, and Regina realizes that she has not only placed herself squarely between Gold and the boy, but that she and Pinocchio have been caught neatly between the Queens of Darkness and Rumpelstiltskin. The latter is definitely not a position she much enjoys, but neither does she want to give up the former. They're all watching her, but as always she can feel the particular sensation of Mal's watchful eyes as they trail across her form, and it ratchets up the anxiety she already feels, uncertain about how to proceed and wishing that she hadn't dumped her phone as she had. Trapped, as always, between a rock and a hard place, she stepped slowly to the side, giving Gold a clear shot at the boy. 

"What a relief. You see, we're not going to ask young Pinocchio here to remember anything, because he can't," Gold explains, dagger glinting as he strides forward, stopping as he steps past Regina in the middle of the room. "No amount of torture will work on him, but it will succeed on the man he used to be." He raises the dagger and Regina hovers slightly closer, looking anxiously over his shoulder as if she would be able to do anything but watch if something went wrong. The spell goes flawlessly, and in the blink of an eye there is a fully grown August Booth slumbering in the chair where his younger self had just been. And if what Gold just said is true, August would be able to tell them everything, and they would be lucky if the Happy Sunshine Gang was able to mobilize to stop them in time. Regina swallows hard.

"Welcome back, August. Now, shall we begin?"


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 4x16 Poor Unfortunate Souls - Gold's Cabin, part 1

"I already told you I don't know anything about this Author," August is saying earnestly when the cabin door swings open and Cruella, followed as always by Ursula, enter. The woman with the two-toned hair had bounded out scant moments before, right as it was becoming very clear to those in the cabin that something would need to escalate soon if an answer wasn't given, to fetch Ursula for the fun that was surely coming. Regina had shaken her head at the way Cruella seemed, at times, to be nothing more than a very human puppy, and the amusement had lasted her for several heartbeats before she had remembered the pickle she was still stuck in. 

"Well perhaps you could use a little incentive," Ursula says, making a slight detour as she bursts through the door to pick up a small knife off the table by the door and then taking the few steps required to put the point of the blade directly beneath his chin. The threat is obvious, but August doesn't seem any more phased by it than he does by anything else.

"No, that knife isn't going to make me remember something that I don't know," he explains urgently, seeming a little bit desperate, and Regina holds up a hand to stop everything as she realizes that he is more than willing to die with his secrets if they aren't careful, and Ursula doesn't seem inclined to be careful.

"Wait," she commands, and there's a brief pause before the dagger in Ursula's hand jumps suddenly into Regina's. Four pairs of exasperated eyes go to Regina as she fights the blush, not having intended to summon the knife but not entirely sorry to have lost slight control of her magic either. 

"Is there a problem?" Ursula asks aggressively, clearly upset at the interruption.

"I knew she didn't have the stomach for this," Cruella says right on her heels, her tone so reminiscent of what it had been two nights ago in the car, when Regina had used magic to keep them all from getting killed by a train. She hopes she hasn't cost Mal another diamond necklace, even though she would contend that there wasn't really a way to have won what appears to be Cruella's favorite game.

"Please," she sneers, easily brushing off the aggression and the overt criticism, "I was torturing people way back when you were still playing with puppies." Cruella stills abruptly at the remark, and Regina isn't entirely sure what reaction typically follows that warning sign so she just continues. "This sorry excuse for a man used to be made of wood," she reminds the room, somewhat gratified as August licks his lips and hangs his head, but more than a little concerned at what they might be able to get out of him if he is as worried as he appears by what he knows she is about to suggest. "So let's light a fire under him and see what happens." The fireball flares easily into existence above her palm, and August begins to look very worried.

"Okay. Alright. You know something, I actually, uh, do remember something about the Author." Satisfied, Regina casually tosses the fireball into the fireplace as Maleficent steps closer, body heat on one side warring with the new heat from the hearth as the fireball bursts into a good-sized blaze. Regina can't help remembering all those years ago, when her fireballs had been pitiful and barely enough to light the fireplace in Maleficent's sitting room, let alone the small group of soldiers she had tried to take on that very same day, memories as always a riptide threatening to pull her under. "Ah..."

"Don't hold out on us," Ursula insists, crowding closer as if being tightly ringed by the group of villains (though Gold is still against the far wall) is going to cow him into talking.

"Yeah, when I was in Hong Kong, uh, before the curse broke, I met a mystic. His name was the Dragon. I don't know how he knew about the book but he had been looking for the Author for years."

"And what did this Dragon learn?" Gold asked, finally adding to the conversation rather than just watching the entire thing play out.

"He died before I could ask."

"Oh, well that's something you two are about to have in common," Gold replied, finally standing and joining the group. 

"And after he died, I took his research, and I brought it to Storybrooke" August continues, not phased at all by Gold's threat. 

"Do you really think this man-child is telling us the truth?" Mal asks, though by her tone and skeptical sideways glance, blue eyes cutting up through blonde eyelashes, it's clear that she already believes she knows the answer. 

"Wouldn't be the first time he's lied to my face," Gold answers, confirming Maleficent's clear suspicions. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to pay a visit to his trailer and find out."

"While you're doing that should we carry on with the rest of the plan?" Ursula asks and Regina, utterly fed up with being always so far out of the loop, jumps on the words immediately.

"Rest of the plan? What aren't you telling me?" She's aiming for undiluted curiosity, rather than outright accusation, but she's not sure she quite makes it, considering that she is rather fed up with not knowing anything. 

"You're gonna have to do a lot more than just kidnap a marionette, torture a few logs, for us to tell you everything. In the meantime, be content that you've finally chosen the winning side." Cruella snickers and Regina shakes her head ruefully as Gold leaves, casually strolling towards the fire and crouching in front of it as if to warm herself. Or to brood at being so publicly reprimanded. 

Her expression hardens once her back is well and truly to the rest of the room, allowing her true feelings to spill across her face in and settle there into a tight, tense, and angry expression as she summons the very smoke from the fire and wills it up the chimney and into the world, sending part of her spirit with it.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 4x16 Poor Unfortunate Souls - Gold's Cabin, part 2

Regina wakes from a nightmare, practically burned to a crisp by her own fireball, with a startled gasp and tries to get her bearings, and breathing back under control. It takes a few seconds, but she realizes that she's still in Gold's cabin and that she's got company. She'd love to try and make sense of the dream, but she knows that talking about Robin with any of the occupants of the cabin would be opening herself up for ridicule, and she knows that discussing it with Mal is extremely ill-advised as well. While the blonde might be more willing to tolerate her than the others, mixing Mal and any other past/potential lover would not only be complicated but possibly dangerous if the other woman's territorial instincts were to be accidentally triggered.

"If you're having trouble sleeping, I have something that might help," Mal drawls, and Regina turns to find the woman sitting comfortably in an arm chair by the window in the corner, newspaper spread across her lap. Cruella is in the chair right next to her, and both women are looking at her with undisguised fascination and interest. Regina isn't sure how long they've been sitting there, watching her sleep, but it certainly doesn't help her get a grip on herself in the wake of that dream. 

"I'm fine, thank you," she replies after taking a very deliberate breath, but she's sure it hardly sounds convincing when it comes out as barely more than a wisp of a sentence. She's fairly certain that she can do without whatever likely sleeping curse-laced solution Mal would provide, and that she doesn't have time for the probable alternate suggestion of physical exhaustion. The thin facade is ruined even further as a board creaks and she whips around to face the noise, clearly startled and defensive. It's only Gold returning, though that hardly makes Regina feel any less defensive, and she stands, vacating her chair in favor of trying to walk off some of her adrenaline.

"Hello, dearie," Gold says in greeting, though it's not entirely clear which of the women, or both, he's directing it to. All Regina can tell is that it isn't directed at her, nor is it directed at August. 

"Did you find anything at the puppet's trailer?" Cruella asks eagerly, looking awkwardly scrawny without the giant fur coats she was always wearing. 

"Of course not," Gold says, looking straight at August. "I didn't even look. The man's a born liar - he never would have cracked so easily. Instead, I paid a visit to the fairies. Or rather, a visit to their ample supply of magic. Now this potion," he continues, holding up a small vial, "can temporarily reverse any spell those do-gooders cast. They made him real," the cork pops as it is pulled free from the mouth of the vial and Rumpelstiltskin throws it away carelessly. "This can undo that. And I promise you, dearie, this is going to hurt."

August is shaking his head as Rumple advances on him, flanked by an interested Cruella and Maleficent on one side. August does his best to struggle, but Gold is able to pull the gag from his mouth with ease and it doesn't take him very much longer to pour the entire potion down the man's throat. There's the sound of creaking wood and then the man turns to wood before their very eyes, features becoming nothing more than chiseled grooves and glossy paint. Cruella looks impressed and utterly fascinated at the same time, and Maleficent's lips are beginning to stretch upwards into a tiny, predatory smile.

"Now, let's see if we can pull this puppet's strings."

They all watch in silence after Rumple's parting comment, staring at the wooden puppet that is more more animated than the chair underneath him. Regina wasn't sure what she had expected, but it was certainly something more torturous than that. Any idiot could immobilize something, or turn it into an inanimate object. She had thought the Dark One smart enough to realize that inanimate objects weren't great at story-telling.

The anticipatory silence in the air gives her pause, however, and so she waits with the others until, barely a minute later, there's the creaking of stressed wood and August is turning back into a man before their very eyes. He doesn't make much noise as the change comes over him, but the look on his face indicates that it wasn't pleasant.

"When you said it was temporary you really weren't kidding, were you, darling?" Cruella blurts out as the last traces of wood fade from the man's features. 

Rumple ignores her, stalking forward two steps to threateningly close the distance between himself and August. "You may no longer look like the puppet you once were, but it matters not. That potion you just drank has activated that built-in lie detector of yours."

"I don't know what you're talking about," August says bravely, and there's a brief pause and then his eyes water as his nose seems to grow. The process was likely unpleasant while nothing more than a puppet, but as a real man of flesh and blood it seems to be very painful. Rumpelstiltskin chuckles darkly, and Regina isn't sure if she prefers the Storybrooke version of the imp's signature giggle or not. 

"Excellent," Gold says when the nose has finished growing. "The next lie is gonna hurt." With a wave of his hand, the chair spins around as Rumple moves to shove August towards the still-burning fireplace. It quickly becomes very clear that the next lie he tells will grow his nose right into the roaring flames, and Regina is dimly aware of Mal's eager step forward, eyes bright as she tries to get a better view of the man who will soon, potentially, roast himself alive. Regina shudders as the Dragon licks her lips, and doesn't immediately know whether to chalk it up to revulsion or arousal. Still, she steps forward as Cruella, next to Mal, does and the three of them close the ring behind Gold. "What do you know about the Author?"

"I already told you everything!" August cries, shaking his head, but the nose begins growing almost immediately, not that any of them had needed the physical indicator.

"Try again, dearie. Where is he?"

"I don't know," August gasps, struggling against Gold's surprisingly strong grip on the back of his shirt which keeps him bent close to the fire. 

"Do not fool yourself," Gold instructs over a pained moan as the man's nose grows yet again, "I will get my answer." He barely waits for August's breathless assent before repeating his earlier question. "Where is he?"

"Okay, alright. I'm gonna tell you what you wanna know," the man-puppet promises, and Regina steps closer, suddenly nervous. It would be so easy for her to miss whatever August says next, or for Gold to send them out of the room, and she wants to make sure that she clearly hears whatever August is going to divulge. At the same time, she worries about the almost-certain race for the Author that will now be taking place, as Regina plays both sides and hopes that the Charmings, and Emma, can ultimately reach the Author before the Queens of Darkness and the Dark One do. The more selfish side of her wants to not care about which side reaches the goal first, as she would likely get her wish either way, but she doesn't put it past the villains to screw her out of her happy ending and send the whole town to hell in a hand-basket, so she sticks to pinning her hopes on the Charmings. At least when Snow White inevitably screws her out of her happy ending, the villains likely won't have won either. "The Sorcerer, ah, trapped the Author behind a door," August elaborates, still trying to twist and turn in Rumple's grip. 

"The Sorcerer. A door. He's speaking in riddles," Cruella proclaims from behind her, one elbow propped in the opposite palm and the free hand waving about as she tries to puzzle her way through it. Regina is startled to realize that she is several steps in front of the other women, despite how eager they had been to watch closely as Gold worked, as Regina has been creeping forward in anxious little half-steps ever since the others stopped moving entirely. 

"Listen to me, Gold, you know about the Sorcerer. You know I'm telling the truth. And she," August says, turning in Rumple's suddenly slack grip to look directly at Regina, "she knows about the door." Regina looks at him in utter disbelief, confused by his words, but the man's nose is pointing directly at her, worse than any finger, and it's the most damning thing August could have possibly done because now all eyes in the room are focused firmly on her. "I know my papa gave you my things," August continues, and the semi-betrayed look coming from Mal feels heavy and the weight of it is making her feel ill. She hadn't ever done anything, and she doesn't feel that she has now (though she knows that she will), to illicit that gaze from the blonde before, and even their confrontation and fight for the Dark Curse had been expected, as though they had each resigned themselves to the eventuality. They should have both resigned themselves to this as well, to the ultimate betrayal of one by the other, considering that this was how all villains played the game, but things had always been different between them, right from the start. They had been closer than any others would have dared, and Regina can hear an echo of the gloating words she had once voiced, as the Evil Queen fully lost to her darkness, which don't make her feel any better. 'Love is weakness, Maleficent. I thought you knew that?' part of her wants to whisper, even though she knows that this refrain, Mother's favorite, had never served to make anything feel better, and had only ever made things worse. 

"There was a page that I took out of the book," August prompts Regina, oblivious to the sadness and desperation which creep and crawl their way through her, fighting with the guilt and the ever-present, razor-sharp awareness of the sorceress behind her with enough force to send her head spinning and stomach churning. "It had an illustration of the door on it."

The brief silence seems long enough to last an eternity as her heart pounds and her palms sweat and she avoids even glancing at Mal. "Regina?" Gold asks, pleasantly curious and not yet angered or betrayed.

"There were just scraps of paper," she deflects, still confused by what the page has to do with anything and hurt by the fact that August is so willing to sell her out like he has. She had never liked the puppet, and for good reason, but this is taking things a little far. The combination seems to color her tone with an authentic amount of genuine innocence, and the fact that no one leaps for her throat just yet seems to prove that.

"Then you'll have no problem sharing them with us now," Gold says, and there's the trap that Regina was waiting for. It's always been interesting to her to watch how easily Gold can back someone into a corner, never seeming overtly threatening but never offering reprieve until you are once more walking a tightrope where one wrong move will send you falling to your death.

"Well I would," she says firmly, trying to push back just as subtly, "if I hadn't already given them to Henry." It's unspoken, but there seems to be an understanding between all of them that her son, and Gold's grandson, are off-limits and that she will do her very best to avoid dragging him, in any way, into this mess. 

Rumple just makes a small noise of realization, eyebrows quirking upward for a brief moment before turning back to August. "Do you remember what the door looks like?"

"Uh, made of wood," August says slowly, trying to remember the details and describe them accurately. "Hand carved frame. Gilt in gold."

But Rumple really doesn't care so much about the decorations. "Where is the door?" he almost whispers. 

"All I know," August says, and then pauses, as if weighing his options, "is," another pause, and brown eyes close almost as if in prayer, "it's somewhere in Storybrooke." Cruella and Mal shift eagerly, waiting for Pinocchio's nose to betray the lie but it remains unchanged and the motion dies out quickly with no real outlet. Regina's eyes close, though whether that's in relief or in prayer she's not sure. In some ways it would have been easier in the Land without Magic, far away from this town and the people she cares about, to be the villain. 

Gold laughs softly, patting August on the shoulder before hauling him up and back into his chair. "There we are now," he says as the puppet's back falls against the chair, once more seated securely away from the threat of fire. "That wasn't so hard now, was it?" August glares, but doesn't answer, as the women subtly shift themselves until he is once more ringed neatly by the four of them. "Now since the Sorcerer was the one who did the trapping," Gold says to the three women, adjusting his tie, "we will start our search for the door at his mansion. Maleficent," he adds as he reaches for his coat, indicating that the wants the tall blonde to join him.

"I'll stay here and watch the puppet," Regina volunteers, arms crossed defensively over her chest. She's fairly certain staying behind is her best bet - she'll be able to get out of there with August and she and the Happy Sunshine Gang will be able to start their own search, hopefully coming across the door before Gold and Mal do, and before anyone notices that the man-child is gone. 

"No, no, Cruella will be our guard dog," Gold instructs as he shrugs into his coat. Where Regina would have felt offended, Cruella only offers a glittering smile, cruel red lips curled up in satisfaction and pride. "Since you're the only one who's seen the door, you're gonna have to help us find it."

With no other options left, Regina offers him a cold smile, and follows the other two out the front door into the cold Storybrooke night.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 4x16 Poor Unfortunate Souls - outside the Author's Mansion

"Well that was a royal waste of time," Regina grumbles, thinking that she of all people should know a royal waste of time when she sees one, being the only actual royal in the group.

"The door may not be in the Sorcerer's mansion but it's somewhere in Storybrooke. We will find it."

They're exiting the Sorcerer's mansion, which is predictably empty (even if only because they would have found the door by then if that's where it was located) when headlights pierce the darkened and empty streets and the rumble of a motor and screeching tires is audible. All three of them throw their hands up to shield their eyes as the blinding lights bounce madly across the road, the madcap pattern and the telling growl of the engine marking the car instantly as Cruella's with her behind the wheel. Regina is getting increasingly less fond of surprises as the night goes on, but even she has to admit that the distraction is somewhat welcome if only to break up the tense silence that the three searchers had been in ever since having left the cabin. Aside from curt niceties, only when necessary and only offered in a professional sense, not a word has been spoken and the silence has been making Regina's skin itch. The sensation is somehow worse from having been on edge for several days straight, and for the always unnerving sensation of Maleficent's stare. The dragon is patient, Regina had forgotten that much, and whatever reason the blonde has for keeping such a close eye on her hasn't abated one bit as the days have gone on. She's relatively sure that things are only going to get worse.

"What are you doing here? Where's August?" Gold cries as Cruella practically throws herself out of the car before it's been parked for half a second. Maybe he can't tell, but Regina can see that something has gone awry just from taking one look at the woman, who looks to be a little bit closer to panic than the usual manic excitement she can display.

"They rescued him, the heroes," she gasps out, somehow out of breath as if she'd run to get them despite having driven. Clearly, she is more than effected by whatever had happened, and scenarios start to flash through Regina's head, one after the next, until she has to look down to avoid falling down as her head spins with possibilities.

"You had one simple task!"

"It wasn't my fault!" Cruella whines back at Gold, clearly not happy with taking the blame. "We have a mole." The intonation is deep enough that all three pause, silent, for a moment, and all Regina can hear is the thump, thump, thump of her panicked heartbeat in her ears.

"Who would be foolish enough to cross us?" Mal demands, and Regina doesn't miss the way her eyes cut to Regina, passing over Gold, between them, like he isn't even there. 

"I know exactly who," Cruella tells them, and Regina tries not to hold her breath as she prepares to be killed on the spot. "Ursula." The breath she's been holding leaves her in a shaky whisper as she tries not to look too visibly relieved. "She sold us out for a reunion with Daddy Dearest," Cruella explains, and she's lost all traces of her earlier panic and is now practically quivering with ill-contained rage.

"Alright, we may have lost our informant, but we still have his information," Gold says, trying to make lemons into lemonade. "Bring us the illustration of the door, maybe there's something in it that the puppet missed." The instruction is clearly for Regina, so she tries to pull herself together, to hide her shaky limbs, as she nods and disappears in a puff of purple smoke.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 4x17 Best Laid Plans - Gold's cabin

Naturally, the page stays more or less exactly where it is. Regina isn't stupid enough to give the page over to Rumplestiltskin and the others and just hope for the best, but she and Emma spend enough time dealing, first with the page, then with August, and then with the page again, that her absence is definitely noticed.

"Oh at last! I feel I've aged a decade waiting for you," Cruella snaps out the instant the door opens, and it's clear from her tone that the woman is incredibly unhappy.

"Well you certainly look like it," Regina deflects easily, not willing to rise to the bait when she definitely doesn't have what she had been sent off to find, but unable to let that quip go unsaid.

Maleficent is not amused. "Where's the page, Regina?" she asks tersely, and Regina has the grace, and sense, to look somewhat sheepish.

"Don't tell me you failed," Gold says, but Regina is already working to explain herself.

"The page was under a protection spell. Something cooked up by the Savior. She almost caught me trying to break it; I had to flee."

"Are you sure that's what happened?" Gold asks, and Regina stares at him, eyebrow quirking almost imperceptibly at the insinuation (regardless of how true it is).

"Of course I am."

"It's just that you've been gone an awfully long time, and yet you come back empty-handed." Regina tries not to notice how the three of them are creeping in on her, closer and closer, in a way that would be threatening and worrisome if not for the ace she has up her sleeve.

"I'm not empty handed," she informs them, smile on her face as if she is not at all concerned by their posturing. It's the work of a moment to grab the phone from her pocket and access the photo roll, pulling up the picture she had taken of the page and hold the phone out to them for inspection. "I got this."

"A photograph," Gold breathes, though it's obvious what it is, as Cruella snatches the phone from Regina's hand to inspect it herself. The former Mayor holds in a snide remark about not needing your hands to see, and lets them pass it around amongst themselves.

"Oh, and an incompetent one too," Cruella proclaims, "that glare ruins any clear view of the door."

"No that's not a glare," Gold says, taking the phone back, and it's only now that Regina starts to be concerned. "That's magic. This door has been sealed by it. This is the door we've been looking for."

"You think the Author is trapped in an illustration?" Maleficent queries, not quite convinced. "But that would mean--"

"The Sorcerer imprisoned him in the book," Gold finishes, a wondering expression on his face that makes Regina feel slightly ill. Maybe it would have been better for all involved if she had brought in Emma's, admittedly good, copy page. "We need to get it. Bring us the page," he instructs Regina, not for the first time, but she's as unimpressed by the order now as she was before.

"That won't be easy. The Savior isn't about to let it out of her sight," Regina reminds him.

"Don't worry about her," Mal says, and Regina whirls around to face the Dragon. "I've got just the thing." Somehow, that's precisely what she's worried about.


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 4x17 Best Laid Plans - the Forest, somewhere

The four of them, the four that are left, stand on top of a ridge as Regina surveys the town that she used to rule. She assumes that the others all see different things as they look down and across the treetops to where roofs are just visible, but all she sees is a town that she's spent thirty years in and has learned to call home, which wasn't something that she had really ever had. None of the castles she had lived in, had claimed, had ever truly felt like home; indeed in some ways Maleficent's fortress had felt more like home, more like a haven, than anything she had called her own. She tries unsuccessfully to pull herself from those kinds of thoughts, from thinking of the Dragon as an ally, as a home, as a friend, when they will surely end up on opposite sides of the brewing confrontation.

She tries even more unsuccessfully not to fall into the comforting lull as Maleficent holds her staff aloft and light purple magic begins to pulse from the orb. The feeling of Ma's magic is familiar, is comforting, and she is more than a little susceptible to the sleeping magic that sweeps over the town after years of experimenting and time in Mal's company, safe in the Dragon's fortress. Luckily for her, the magic is focused the opposite direction, towards the town below, and with Mal's attention elsewhere, all Regina has left to fight against are her own memories, and her own demons, without the weight of a Dragon's stare, or the siren's song of strong sleeping magic. 

"It's done," Mal says grimly, as Regina feels the effects finally lessen for good, rather than recede just to make another pulse, and she watches as the violet magic shimmers away from them in a hazy wave. "Let's get to work."

They walk back to Cruella's car, which is a decent hike away, for reasons that don't quite make sense to Regina, but she is grateful for the walk, not looking forward to snooping around in an enchanted town, where anything could happen and the citizens below would be entirely unaware. She's too focused on apprehension, on walking off the comforting lull of residual sleeping magic, to realize that she is out in front of the group (though Cruella is hot on her heels) but that for the first time she can't feel Mal's gaze on her back.


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 4x17 Best Laid Plans - the Charming's loft

"The savior looks a lot less threatening in this state, doesn't she?" Maleficent remarks idly, staring at Emma, sleeping peacefully on a slumbering Hook's shoulder, from the middle of the Charming's loft apartment. Regina doesn't know exactly where the page from the book is, but she knows where it isn't, so she snoops around with little restraint in the desk and stacks of paper nearer to the front door. She is at home enough in the tiny apartment from frequent visits that she doesn't feel the need to stand, like a stranger, in the center of the room and observe her surroundings, get her bearings, before beginning the search. Of course, the fact that both Maleficent and Cruella stand there, staring, means that Regina is doing all of the, fruitless, work, a fact that she does her best to pay no mind.

"I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to wring her scrawny little neck right now," Cruella practically purrs, taking a step forward as Maleficent moves away, but she makes no move to close the distance between herself and the couch either. 

"Don't even think about it," Regina scolds from the kitchen, sounding for all the world like a mother trying to keep her unruly children in line as she takes two swift steps so that she's able to see the defenseless Savior, still safe, on the sofa. She barely has time to register the thought before the words are out of her mouth, and she thanks the powers that be that her tone is mild and not at all sharp or defensive. Nonetheless, it clearly gains attention as all three villains turn to her in stunned silence, though whether it's due to the words themselves or merely the tone Regina can't be certain. "I think we can all agree that killing the Savior at this point would be ill-advised," she ad-libs smoothly, though the words towards the end are peculiarly mumbled as she turns from their scrutiny to once more peruse Snow White's belongings looking for a page she knows she will not find. There is a short pause before the sound of movement resumes, as Maleficent and Cruella stride about the apartment looking only with their eyes (but not their hands, as she had chided Henry for doing as a child), and Gold slams the silverware drawer shut in frustration.

"You're right about that," Gold acknowledges, and Regina breathes a little easier. "You're wrong about the location of the page. It's not here."

"We just have to keep looking," Regina says, as if wearied by the prospect. That part, at least, is no lie. "The page was here two hours ago. It didn't just grow legs and walk out of here on it's own."

"Unless someone walked out of here with it."

"I put the whole town to sleep," Maleficent growls, as if insulted by the very idea that there could still be people walking around in Storybrooke.

"Except for those who've been under a sleeping curse and are immune," Gold points out, and Regina's head shoots up from where she is examining a small basket. Henry. "I may know a resourceful young man who's wide awake." Regina turns, snarl already on her face. "One who's very protective of the storybook and all it's contents. One who's gonna test his mother's commitment towards helping me."


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 4x17 Best Laid Plans - the Author's Mansion

"No one goes near Henry but me," Regina states, summoning near forgotten mayoral, and royal, authority into her tone as the four of them exit the apartment building. There had been no stopping the search for her son, who no doubt had the page with him, and Regina had chosen to try and control things from within, rather than trying to stand in front of something that wouldn't be stopped. The best way to get in front of this, she had decided, was to be in charge of it. "If you have a problem with that, you can take it up with one of my fireballs."

No one voices any concerns, but she doesn't miss the fact that the other three hang back as they hit the sidewalk, leaving her to stalk away towards the car by herself. She doesn't doubt that Gold is leaving his two pets with instructions on how to take care of things if she, for whatever reason, cannot prove her loyalty to their cause and sides with Henry instead, but she cannot think of that now. 

She's tempted to poof away from them both but she knows that desperation won't make anything better, and to handle the situation properly she will need time to think, to compose herself, and to figure out what to do. No magical transportation can grant her that much, she knows, so she dutifully gets into the backseat of Cruella's car, where she is able to observe easier than she is able to be observed, and barks at the pair of them to stay in the car when they pull up in front of the Sorcerer's mansion. It is the only place she can imagine Henry going if he thought there would be trouble, considering the entire town is asleep, and it hadn't taken very much thought to come up with the location when Cruella had asked her where to start their search. 

She glares meaningfully at both of them before pushing open the front door, somewhat mollified to see that neither woman has moved, though both eye her closely from the car, and she doesn't quite manage to relax as she walks through now-familiar hallways towards the room she guesses is Henry's most likely hiding place.

"Grandma, Grandpa, you won't believe what I just--" Henry's excited chatter halts abruptly as he realizes that the figure in the open door is not that of one of his Grandparents, but is hers instead. Regina is sure that she wants plausible deniability and that she really should talk to her son about blurting things out to just anyone, no matter how much he had expected someone else, but she can only marvel at her son's caution as he regards her from across the room, silent, as he waits to figure out how to proceed. It's not a secret from him that she is undercover, and he has learned, in the seconds since she, not Snow or Charming, walked through the door, that he should be careful of what he says until he can be sure of who is listening. 

"What, Henry?" she asks, as if by rote, to prompt him to complete his sentence. 

"Mom," is the only answer she gets, and because she is still pleased to hear him call her that, after so much turbulence in their relationship, (and because she truly doesn't want to know), she doesn't push any further. "What are you doing here?" 

He comes around a table to close the distance between him and she continues her walk into the room to meet him halfway. "I'm sorry, I didn't want it to come to this," she tells him earnestly, and her mouth is open, words almost spilling from her lips, when she hears the tell-tale sound of a high heeled boot on wooden floors that signifies that they are no longer alone. 

"Looks like we're here just in time," Maleficent says smugly, voice bright with triumph as Regina lets out a resigned exhale. 

"I told you I could handle this." The words are hard as flint and Regina doesn't even deign to look at the two women as they both come up behind her, fanning out to form a hard line of the three sorceresses to block Henry's escape.

"We're not sure you have it in you to be a true disciplinarian," Cruella informs her, and Regina tries not to think of her own mother, and of what they surely expect her to do now that Henry is in front of her. "I"d say you shouldn't be alarmed, darling, but I'd be lying," the woman adds, looking directly at Henry as she says the words, and Regina's hackles raise.

"Lay a hand on my son and I'll end you," she threatens, and the words are quick but the tone is even in a way that makes it clear that they are no idle threat, and that the words are not unfamiliar ones to her. She has made plenty of threats, and has fulfilled most of them (as it's suited her), but an end to the person who dares touch her son is one thing she can, and will, promise. 

"You won't have to do anything as long as he cooperates," Mal points out from her perch on a nearby table, though it seems to Regina that the Dragon may be somewhat skeptical of her ability to make good on her threat, as if she, as if any mother, is so soft that she would not kill to protect her son.

Trapped between a rock and a hard place, Regina settles for a terse, "Henry, give me the page."

"Mom, no," Henry says, utterly aghast, and something inside her, something utterly committed to the performance of a lifetime, snaps.

"Henry Daniel Mills!" Henry's expression twitches as all three names hit him in a verbal smack, as he fights against the urge to obey that all children have conditioned into them when their parents three-name them. "You will do as I say." She enunciates the command clearly, voice calmer, but deadly serious. He stares up at her, and she quirks an eyebrow slightly, hoping that her boy, her smart boy, will take the hint and will be willing, and able, to do as she wants. It is the only way she can see for both of them to escape this moment unharmed.

His face is set in an expression of willful defiance, despite its slightly sullen cast, and for a moment, she thinks he will not obey, that she will have to do to him what she swore never to do, that she will have to be as her own mother was just so that neither woman standing next to her get the chance to touch him, but he breaks their staring contest after a long pause, glancing down at the book held protectively under his arm.

"'Kay," he breathes, reaching across his body to draw a single, loose page, from the still-closed book. Regina's hand barely has time to close over the offered page before Maleficent is crowding in close, so close that she nearly crowds Cruella out from between them, and Regina takes only a moment to glance at the page and hand it to the blonde, assured that Henry has done as she has asked and has handed her Emma's copy.

"As promised," she says crossly as the page is taken from her grasp so that Maleficent can examine it herself. "Now let's find Gold and set this Author free." The others file past her without another word, easily pleased by the victory, and Regina hangs back just long enough to exchange a private glance with her son before she too leaves the room.


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 4x17 Best Laid Plans - Gold's Pawn Shop

Neither Mal nor Cruella quite know what Gold could be doing, wandering alone in this sleeping town, but he's told them where to meet him and so the three women drive, in silence, to Gold's Pawn Shop. Regina suspects she has an idea of what he was doing, and finds it amusing that the others, or at least Cruella, does not.

"What were you doing in there?" she asks as he comes outside to meet them on the sidewalk, looking for all the world like a thief trying to sneak away in the night.

"Mind your own business," he replies quickly, too quickly for the remark to be natural, and Regina instantly knows that he was doing exactly what she had thought. She can at least reason that what Belle doesn't know won't hurt her. "Did you find the boy?"

"We found the boy," Mal proclaims, presenting the page immediately for his inspection. 

"I found him," Regina chimes in, placing special emphasis on the pronoun, but Gold isn't really listening.

"This is rubbish," he says, and Regina knows, as she had known that morning at the convent, that the fake page was not good enough to fool the Dark One.

"What?" The words come out in a strangled squeak of outrage and while it's not the most attractive exclamation she's ever made, she's pleased by the authenticity.

"It's a fake." Cruella's gaze turns unerringly towards Regina, accusation clear in her eyes, and Regina doesn't do her the pleasure of meeting it. "You've spent enough time with the book. You should know the difference," Gold accuses, stepping in closer to try and bully her as he has always done. She senses more than feels Mal's gaze shift inward as well, and knows that she is well and truly caught between them with no good options but to try and talk her way out of it.

"They tricked me," Regina insists.

"What, you think I didn't suspect you?" The page makes a loud ripping noise as Gold carelessly tears the page in half. "I've been waiting for this moment; I knew it would come." There's barely a pause before he barks out, "Maleficent," like a pre-agreed-upon signal, and Regina knows she is up against a very short time clock.

"Wait I can explain-" she tries, but Mal's arm is already moving, the magical gesture flowing naturally, and the words cut off as the world goes dark and she falls to the cement like a puppet with her strings cut.


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 4x20 Lily - Granny's diner

"I'm going after Gold," Emma declares, and Regina tunes back into a conversation that has already been going on for far too long. Seeing no need for secrecy any longer, as it is already very clear that Regina is no longer (if she even ever was) on the side of the villains, she, the Charmings, their pirate mascot, and the Savior herself have all gathered in an empty Granny's for an emergency meeting. A meeting which has so far consisted of a distraught Emma pacing around like a caged tiger, snapping at every attempt her parents make to calm her down, and generally ignoring any calming influence Hook may be trying to exert on the conversation. Of them all, Regina is the only one who is silent, watching with far too much sympathy and understanding to want to interject, though she generally agrees with the table as a whole when they make it clear that they disagree with the younger blonde. "He made this happen, he needs to answer for it."

"Careful, don't go off half-cocked," Hook advises, probably from personal experience more than any other logical means, and David is quick to jump on the tail of the sentence, likely hoping his words would be better received when absorbed in tandem with the pirate's.

"Hook's right, he wants you angry," David tries to point out, rather sensibly, elbows on the table and his head in his hands. Out of all of them, Emma is the only one who looks anything other than wearied, or worried; the whole of the table looks exhausted, while Emma paces around filled to the brim with some kind of frenetic energy.

"Yeah well I am angry; doesn't mean he's gonna get what he's after," Emma shoots back venomously, with a glare to go with it. "Do I wish I could change what I did to Cruella? Yes, but that's regret not darkness." And then, because she hasn't been able to let it go yet, and the more agitated she gets the more obvious it is that Emma has neither forgiven nor forgotten, she adds a snide, "I think we've all done things we regret." David absorbs the verbal blow with nothing more than a clenched jaw, but Snow glares up at her daughter, annoyed, even as she shifts guiltily in her seat. "Right now we need to focus on one thing: how to keep Gold and the Author from causing any more damage." 

"I might be able to help with that," a familiar voice says, over the rattle of cheap blinds against the glass and wood of the front door to Granny's. Regina's breath hitches in her throat as she registers the sight of Maleficent, still framed by the now closed door, well and truly within enemy territory. The blonde looks as beautiful as ever, hair perfectly coiffed and shirt starched to perfect, pristine stiffness under the gray wool of her pea coat, but Regina knows that the Dragon is still dangerous, no matter how pretty she looks, and knows that they have no idea what to expect. She hasn't seen Maleficent since the sorceress was putting her to sleep, and has very little idea of what may or may not have been going on behind the scenes while she was out, and then while she was in captivity. She assumes that Gold had kept the women busy, though perhaps not busy enough, given Cruella's ability to make her final gambit. Of course, that had been almost engineered by Gold, so there was truly no telling.

Regina remains motionless, playing calm and cool as she prepares for the worst, but around her it is only Henry (who is too young to have very much sense about when to be alarmed, and is likely feeling very secure considering the number of powerful, important people in the room) and Hook (who is too used to being a villain himself) who don't make some sort of twitch to betray how utterly unnerved and freaked out Maleficent's appearance makes them. The tall blonde's ability to appear entirely unruffled regardless of the situation has always been a tool to keep people guessing, and now is no exception. The Charmings have never been good at guessing games.

"It now appears we have a common foe," she announces, moving further into the room to stop squarely in front of Emma, and the words are so breezily delivered that it's as if she hasn't noticed Emma's defensive posture, or the way Charming and Snow have half leapt out of their chairs. "Rumplestiltskin."

Though it should have been obvious which foe the blonde was referring to without having to state it so openly, Regina can't help the quirk of her eyebrow at the confirmation. She is overwhelmingly intrigued by the possibilities that such a simple sentence offers, and helplessly charmed and pleased by the prospect. It also seems amazingly fitting that they should start a new partnership here, in the diner, as they had started their last; perhaps they would be able to proceed in a more genuine manner this time. 

"He resurrected you," David points out, shaking his head in his confusion, and Regina only barely prevents herself from letting out an audible sigh. If Mal's apparent offer is genuine, she will be very glad to have the Dragon around, not only because the heroes can be amazingly slow-witted.

"To serve himself, not me," Mal points out easily, with barely a pause needed to defend herself against Charming's stupidity. "Cruella's death only confirmed that." She levels an even glance back at the man, carefully avoiding even glance in Emma's direction, let alone looking directly at the other blonde. 

"Oh, now you want to turn on him before he turns on you," Hook deduces, sounding disgusted at the idea and more than a little condescending, which Regina finds rich considering he himself would have done the same thing not long ago.

"I knew Gold couldn't keep the Dragon on her leash for long," Regina offers, wonder in her tone and a wide smile on her face as she offers the blonde a nod. She alone, out of everyone at the table, believes the blonde, much as Mal alone had believed in her. Echoes of past conversations pass between them in an instant, of "look who's back" and "well it never would have happened if it wasn't for you", and her smile stretches just a little bit wider at the memories that, this time, don't seem to hurt.

"What do you want?" Snow demands.

Mal's response is just as level and as quick as her response to Charming had been. "Nothing from you." Regina doesn't doubt that for one second, and envies anew Mal's nearly impenetrable calm. "But your daughter," she continues, eyes finally flicking from the table to the woman a scant few feet in front of her as she places a slight stress on the label, "I hear has a talent for finding people."

"Yeah I do," Emma admits easily, cautiously curious. "Who do you want found?"

"My daughter," Mal answers, with barely a blink, emphasis on the possessive pronoun this time. Emma blinks up at the Dragon, clearly taken by surprise, but the most dramatic reaction comes from Mary Margaret, who practically reels away from the table.

"She's alive?" The question is full of wonder and confusion, but the answer that comes from Mal is hard, as if the tall woman had hoped not to be reminded of the Charming's part in the disappearance.

"Yes. She survived the journey to this land, the journey you sent her on." Snow still looks like she's been punched in the stomach, but Mal doesn't even bother to look away from Emma, or perhaps can't bring herself to look away from Emma, for long enough to revel in the reaction. As it is, the hard tone has given way momentarily to a deceptively sweet one, the kind of saccharine tone that puts Regina on edge, but it vanishes again in the very next instant. "You want to prevent Rumpelstiltskin from achieving whatever he wants, what better way than leaving this town and helping me?"

"I'm not running away from Gold," Emma says with quiet determination, though she's still clearly blown over by Mal's revelation about her daughter. 

"It's not running away from him, it's hindering him." For the first time, Mal sounds annoyed at having to explain herself, and Regina is frankly surprised that she has lasted this long. 

"What do you know about her?" Emma wants to know, after taking a moment to absorb the truth of Mal's words. 

"Just what the Dark One showed me," Mal admits, though she sounds more than a little reluctant to admit just how little, and how unreliable, her information is. "That she was banished to this world thirty years ago to a place called 'Minnesota'," the emphasis on the place name is strange, as if Mal finds the title ridiculous and utterly foreign, "where she was adopted by a couple. And they named her Lilith," she adds, a hint of motherly love and pride shining through the few words.

"No," Emma breathes, brow wrinkled in confusion, and ever the alert watch-dog, Hook stands at her apparent distress.

"Emma, what is it?" 

But Emma isn't listening to him, or to anyone. Her mouth falls open, gaping spectacularly for a brief moment before she brushes past the Dragon in front of her and rushes towards the door, pushing it open with another rattle of blinds and leaving it to slam back into its frame.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At this point I think it's fairly obvious that I have a few options. The series did not end at all how I was expecting, and the fact that Eddie and Adam basically had Mal fade away into non-existence rather than give her any kind of resolution to her storyline makes for a terrible ending for this fic. As this was the final Dragon Queen scene we got in canon (though more were implied), this will be the end of the fic. If you'd like to see a canon divergence continuation of this fic, which will dip back into something a little more shippy between our two awesome ladies, please comment and let me know!


End file.
